things to bring to Australia
 

Thank you Neil OZ, for the suggestions. I will bring M&M's in small packets, and perhaps small snickers bars or an assortment pf chocolate bars that is being sold now for all hallows eve.To whomever asked about the Grapenuts cereal it is eaten with milk, the bbq sauce is instead of tomato sauce on fried potatoes or meat.Thanks to all for the answers to my questions. I and my granddaughter expect to have a great time in your country.

Bernie - have never seen a nut on a grape vine, what are grapenuts? Is Grapenuts a cereal with dried grapes (ie, sultanas and some kind of nut?). Just curious. I just asked someone from Washington DC and he said he "didn't know, he doesn't have a television".

Bernieb, I'm really hoping your tongue is planted just as firmly in your cheek as mine was. If so ... you win.

Grape Nuts is a delicious cereal made of whole wheat flour and malted barley flour. At the factory, it's baked and then crushed into small nuggets, about 1/4 mm in size. It's a dense, crunchy and quite filling cereal which you eat with milk on top. It's got a nutty flavor and in the TV commericals years ago, they compared it to tasting like "wild hickory nuts". (I don't know about that as I have never eaten wild hickory nuts.)
I read on a website (don't know how reliable it is) that when Grape Nuts were first introduced in the late 1890's that one of the ingredients was maltose, also known then as "grape sugar". Since it had a nutty flavor, they put the two together to make "Grape Nuts".
Anyway, I think Grape Nuts are delicious and I eat it for breakfast at least 2 -3 times a week.

Tongue firmly implanted in cheek. Almost asked which nickels, US or AU.

Longhorn is so right. Grapenuts are great. Even if there are no grapes or nuts. 2-3 times a week for me too.

I guess I started the Grape Nuts and BBQ sauce thing, but haven't seen the site for a while. Sorry. The Grape Nuts were explained quite nicely. They are considered a very healthy cereal (they will keep you regular - if you know what I mean) and do not contain any grapes or nuts. Now to address the BBQ sauce... that is the abbreviation for the word Barbacue - as in steaks on the barbie. It is a rich reddish brown sauce usually of a tomato base, but enhanced with spices, brown sugar, and frequently a hickory wood or mesquitte wood smoke flavoring. There is a big debate as to the proper way to use the sauce. Some say you baste meats with it while it is on the grill, while others say the bbq process is the grill cooking and smoking and then the sauce is lathered on at the table by each individual. You can also pour it over chicken and ribs while they are baking in the oven. I have never seen them eaten on fried potatoes...that is just a ketsup thing. There is great competition among people from Memphis, Tennessee, Texas and Kansas City as to who has the best BBQ sauce. People guard their personal recipes as if they were a precious treasure!! ;o)

Grape Nuts are also good as an ice cream flavoring.

I confess...I've never had Grape Nuts. But then, I'm not much into cereal, or breakfast for that matter.

But I DO love their commercial! As someone pointed out they are touted as being very healhy...I won't do this justice, but....

picture a man in the foreground happily munching his Grape Nuts...lots of very loud crunching sounds....in the background, his wife looking up, screaming "BEAR BEAR" as a huge bear attacks their campground. She runs off, while in the background the bear is making off with all their supplies, including their tent; while Grape Nuts Man continues to crunch away, totally unaware as to what's going on behind him. Love it!

Melodie

My mixture of onions, red capsicum, garlic, chillies, tomato puree, dark beer, brown sugar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, red wine vinegar, Tabasco, salt, cumin and dried oregano makes a pretty good BBQ sauce. I prefer meaty spare ribs from my favourite Chinese butcher to the other kind; marinated overnight in red wine, lemon juice, oil, garlic, black pepper, dried oregano and ground chilli, grilled, then submerged in the sauce and slow-cooked in the oven under aluminium foil. Enough to tempt a vegan.

Geckolips

I never saw this before I responded on the one thread about Texans usually cooking with BBQ sauce as opposed to our general use..more like Ketchup (or Tomato Sauce as we call it).

I brought home a bottle of hickory smoke but wasn't actually sure what to do with it. But hickory and mesquite very American.

As you are maybe aware we have a lot of eucalypt in Australia (well almost no other type of vegatation lol) and when you BBQ it gives a certain flavour to the meat and also a certain aroma to your hair from the smoke!

Oh, please stop this talk of food - I have had dinner tonight, but it is making me peckish!! Neil, your BBQ ingredients are making my mouth water, except perhaps for the beer.
Are grapenuts of a similar ilk to Nutrigrain? I had to stop buying those to make my special Christmas nibble mix because little two-legged young-adult mice developed a penchant for them.

Neil, If I were ever to taste your bbq sauce, I doubt I would ever go back to the bottled version! Sounds yummy.

I lifted that BBQ'd ribs recipe from a magazine in a coffee shop, and if I remember rightly theirs was adapted from a Time-Life cookbook. But then I bastardised it - I didn't want to be so crass as to tear out the page, and in any event I was being watched by a beady-eyed waitress who looked like she'd had lots of practice detecting surreptitious page thieves. So I memorised what I could and wrote the result down when I got home.

(dotty, you don't actually taste the beer.)

(If anyone wants the actual recipe, drop me a line at [email protected])

At least you can find something to read in most coffee shops. Not long ago I went to a doctor and the most recent magazine in his waiting room was a 1998 edition of a British performance car magazine.

Neil, I can outdo you for old magazines in doctor offices (I do so enjoy the Australian Thread). The medical office I use to have to go to had one magazine and it was FlyFishing or something like that published in 1996. It was strange, I never noticed anyone fighting over who was going to get to read it, LOL.

What I truly love about the medical office I go to now is that they have over twenty magazines laying around, all the various current issues. I actually get annoyed if I am called in to see the doctor on time! Take care!

Since the title of this thread is "things to bring to Australia" I'd like to caution against bringing grapenut or other cereal, the customs (agriculture) inspector will probably frown upon that, or worse. I'd bet that if falls under the "organic matter" category that is strictly forbidden.

WK

Pat wrote
Bernie - have never seen a nut on a grape vine, what are grapenuts? Is Grapenuts a cereal with dried grapes (ie, sultanas and some kind of nut?). Just curious. I just asked someone from Washington DC and he said he "didn't know, he doesn't have a television".

I reply
He was probably having you on if he said he didn't know what grape-nuts was because he didn't have a television. Grape-nuts is older than I am. I sometimes add it to yogurt etc. to add a little crunch. It's not something I'd want to eat a lot of on it's own. No fruit.

Actually Kim, its even sillier than that: I asked "do you know of Grapenut cereal in the US"; he answered "no, we don't have TV". I repeated the question to his wife and she knew instantly, the husband thought I was referring to "serial", not "cereal". She said: "imagine chopped up All Bran formed into hard little balls".

'I'd bet that if falls under the "organic matter" category that is strictly forbidden.'

- There isn't a blanket ban on organic matter. We've declared coffee, tea and confectionary, for example, with no problems.