Reading this again I had to buy some oranges. 5 kilos Moroccan for 2€ altogether. Those Sicilian ones are better just a little more expensive. :-) I'm well aware, the best products don't reach the UK (in sufficient amounts), no idea why?

I think kerouac has it exactly right when he says that these traditions stem from a time when fresh fruits were a rare commodity in winter.

We do have a friend who lives in a remote French village and he only wants peanut butter and macadamia nuts from the U.S. And when he's over here, he goes crazy for cole slaw and onion rings. Not sure if that's relevant, but we always get a laugh over it.

Polite aside: Pecans may be a much better gift choice. Our shops carry every nut I know of except pecans. Nestle chocolate chips, instant pudding/pie mixes and over-the counter medicines are other welcome gifts. Frozen orange juice would be preferable to whole oranges.

Gee, Logos, I'll bet you're great fun at cocktail parties. Perhaps a better gift for Mimmel to bring would be an anti-self righteousness pill.

I brought back a can of raw unsalted Stuckey's pecans from Florida. In Europe you can find pecans from Bahlsen, but toasted and salted like almonds.

Dukey, you bring the pills, Cowboy steaks and salad and we'll all be making christmas ornaments out of home grown potatoEs. :D. You can also bring a 3:-O and a few knifes, just make sure you know how to turn a 3:-O into steak.

I said it once I'll say it again... :-) regardless of customs, quality of fruit in Europe vs US, etc. a crate of oranges is going to be a difficult thing to drag thru the airports getting it to Europe with you.

I'd rather receive food than another coffee table book or art object/kitschy souvenir. I'd only give a small sculpture if I was sure it was to the recipient's taste. Ditto ceramic whatnots.

I have given scenic calendars of my home area to European relatives, t-shirts and hats to teenage boys (not so successful), and brought macademia nuts to Paris.

Have you investigated the weight limit on checked baggage? Boxes of oranges are heavy.

I think I'd be rather taken aback if someone gave me a crate of oranges. To me it just seems rather a strange thing to give someone. But if your friends specially like oranges, go ahead.

Here in the Northeast US it used to be a very common 'return from Florida' gift - a big sack of grove fresh oranges or grapefruit. That was years ago when they were not as widely available in every supermarket.

In my household such a gift was always well received. Usually the fresh fruit was accompanied by marmelade (in the little round jars) and orange blossom honey.

Hi, Mimmel,

I'm not aware of any law that says that you can't bring oranges into Germany, or any EC country. But NO POTATOES - due to the danger of bringing in disease.

so leave the spuds behind. anyway, I think you would find that the germans have already got them - a case of "coals to newcastle".

regards, ann

J62 has it = orange marmalade. It's Florida, and it's easy to take. Also try Guava jelly, another southern favorite. And I agree with the fans of nuts - who doesn't like a good nut?

Well - I live in New York and I would think it really weird if someone were to bring a box of oranges to a dinner party. We can get excellent ones at the greengrocer on the corner -if we don;t feel like going to Fairway - along with all sorts of other, much more exotic fruits.

(I do recall people bringing oranges back from Fl when I was a child - but I don;t know why. Even 40 years ago my mother got perfectly good ones from the local market for squeezing each morning.)

People generally bring wine, or fancy chocolates, a unique liquor - or perhaps even some super exotic dessert from a special patisserie.

If you can't tell the difference between "perfectly good" oranges and really good ones, then it's great that no one has taken the trouble to give you really good ones. Obviously you wouldn't apprecite them. That's why there's no point in taking really good chocolates to someone who thinks a Hershey Bar is as good as it gets. Same thing.

Someone from Florida doesn't bring oranges to a friend because he thinks the friend doesn't know where to buy an orange - it's the fact that it is from "home." A box of sunshine from the sunshine state.

It's a symbol, like many affectionate gestures.

Yea. Some people take flowers as a hostess gift. I guess some would think that's stupid because the hostess could buy her own flowers locally? I'm really amazed at the reasoning of some of the responses here regarding gift giving.
I'll agree that it is a bit of a hassle to take the oranges -- but isn't that part of the gift? Perhaps the gift giver feels the recipient is "worthy" of the little bit of effort. And like any gift, if there's a reason you'd think the recipient wouldn't appreciate them, then of course it would be silly to take them.

Neo, I certainly hope there is no one on the Europe board who actually believes a Hershey bar is decent quality chocolate. The difference in quality between a Hershey bar and Swiss or Belgian chocolate is light years greater than the difference in quality between any two oranges I've ever eaten. And I live in Florida.

As far as flowers are concerned, like chocolates, they are something special that, while widely available, most of us don't treat ourselves to--unlike fruit, which I think we all lug home with our bread and milk weekly or more often.

I feel silly arguing about this. But when my "reasoning" ability is questioned, I get riled :)

A bar (100g) of german Feodora costs 1.30€. Why would anybody spend more on chocolate imitations like Hersh..
Are Feodora chocolates available in the US?

http://www.feodora.de/qualitaet.php?p=8

I don't know that brand but Milka and Ritter are available in many supermarkets here in the US..

Milka and Ritter are low end, just like Hersheys (although I'd prefer them over Hersheys any time). A Milka or Ritter 100g bar is 65ct. So you can't expect much.

Well I cannot imagine eating one of those Hershey bars..those type of low-end chocolates taste chalky to me.

..but I will tell you a supermarket chocolate that I think is great..Lindor. This has been around for ages but I just discovered them..the chocolate rolled around a soft center...

Cimbrone the only people who should feel their "reasoning abilities have been questioned" are those who firmly believe that everyone in the world has the same taste they do. If you fit into that category, so be it.

It's great that you are passionate about chocolate. Many people are. But yes, there ARE people who couldn't tell a Hershey Bar from a fine chocolate from Europe -- in fact, some would prefer the Hershey Bar -- hard as that may be for you to understand. There are some people who given a choice would actually choose an orange over a piece of chocolate -- even though you clearly wouldn't. And there are some people who would feel honored to have a friend go to the trouble of lugging a crate of oranges all the way from another continent just because they are even "slightly" better than the ones they can buy -- but never do.

And the idea that "all of us" lug home fresh fruit (particularly whole oranges) from the market is just plain absurd. Very, very few people in this country -- and even fewer in Europe --lug home fresh oranges from the store weekly, if ever. Come on now. Maybe they could, but like buying flowers, it isn't something they normally do. Actually, I'll take that back. I'm willing to bet FAR more Europeans buy fresh flowers every week than buy fresh oranges. Wanna bet on that?

My only point is that there is no reason to think that EVERYONE in the world has the same judgemental tastes about two different things that you do. Nor is is logical to think that everyone in the world is even a chocolate lover or has the same taste in chocolates other people have. People need to KNOW something about their gift recipients. Hopefully anyone who knows you would know to give you find chocolates and not a crate of oranges. But there are others who actually might have a different choice.

Okay, okay...how 'bout some chocolate dipped orange wedges? Or a bottle of Grand Marnier? :)

Good European chocolate does carry a premium in the US, of course. After all, it's come a long way to get to the shelf, and besides that it's ... good. But American tastes have certainly evolved in the past 10 or 20 years, and a lot more people are eating a lot more premium chocolate. Sure, our typical candy bars have more in common with a cola, and Belgium's with .... what? Champagne? A fine port? Cashmere?

As far as chocolate bars or something like them, I'm a Ghirardelli fan - for baking, too. California's best commercial chocolate stacks up against the competition. Amazingly, even though Ghirardelli has had multiple changes in ownership over the past decade or two (including Lindt, which is not a favorite of mine) the quality has held up. I need to try another California entry, Scharffen Berger.

But even Hershey now markets higher-quality chocolate - you won't find it at a convenience store, but it's out there and it's better than the old standby. No small part of this should be laid at the feet of reports that chocolate - the kind filled with cocoa and cocoa butter - is good for us! The fine print on those stories always tell you they're not talking about a Mars bar or a Whitman's sampler or even a fancy box of Godiva, but the good stuff. Not candy per se, but CHOCOLATE. If this has driven Hershey to make a better bar, good enough.

>Lindor
Lindt is more expensive, but not nearly as good as Feodora imho. Lindt does offer a large selection of chocolate christmas tree hangers (kids love them) and they sell a lot during this season, but then there's Gubor that's alot cheaper and just as good.

Is it common in the US, to hang chocolates in the christmas tree for the kids, like it is over here? Once christmas is over it's always interesting to see how fast they disappear :-)

I guess it must seem odd to people living in Spain or Italy that some of us (or at least one of us) load up on things like canned tuna fish when we travel in those countries! After all, we do have tuna in the US! When I think of al the foods I have schlepped home from various trips.....!

EK, that's the truth! But it's a good thing, and consumables are, to me, better than stuff that will fill up my few vacant corners ... and if I hadn't brought home a tin of Morganti coffee from Italy, I would never have written them for more, which lead to a great friendship. (I had to get more -- my friend had written a book while drinking that brand every day at the Caffe Guidi in Sutri. When I noted their slogan is "Il caffe d'autore", I figured it might help me finish a book, too.)

logos, I don't know of a chocolate-on-the-tree habit in the US. We used to add a few dozen cellophane-wrapped candy canes to our tree, then eat them through the month.

Mimmel, check with the Florida Dept. of Agriculture website. I asked a similar question last week on the US forum and a poster told me that you may not take fruit out of the state because of citrus canker.

However, if yours is coming directly from a grower the rules may be different. I was going to bring Meyer lemons out of my parent's yard back to Alabama.

ekscrunchy, I too have discovered Lindor only recently (even though I live in Switzerland since more than 20 years) and agree with you. It's an excellent "supermarket chocolate". I bought a box of mix Lindor with classic milk (red), dark, white and crunchy hazelnut. My favorite is hazelnut but other are good too.

Perhaps we should all avoid buying fruit from Florida.
See http://tinyurl.com/298wbf

As someone who lives quite near a lot of the migrant labor, primarily picking tomatoes, let me tell you that HUGE strides are being made. Is migrant labor a wonderful life? NO. Will it ever be? No. But it is well supervised here in our county, and great numbers of migrant housing that are really good have been built and are provided. Many "former migrants" now stay to work in other labor areas as well now, and social services is doing a pretty good job keeping up with things. Our Habitat for Humanity is a large and successful one -- providing housing for many immigrant laborers who are becoming a valuable part of our social structure.

So boycott buying Florida produce and set the industry back about 10 years -- the times that Independent article seems to be describing.

Here is the list of products which I bring from the USA to Germany for myself:

- really good chile sauce
- canned green chiles
- cactus preserve
- margarita marmalade
- Underwood chicken spread
- Oreo cookies
- jerky
- Key lime pie

Do not bring oranges. Do not bring chocolate. Do not bring Bourbon Whiskey (you can buy Jack Daniels in EVERY supermarket - and Maker's Mark is too strange for European palates).

To each his own, but I'm trying to picture the look on the faces of my European friends as I hand them a can of Underwood chicken spread!!!

"Maker's Mark is too strange for European palates?" I do not understand that statement. Are you saying that few "Europeans" would appreciate a good bourbon?
(I just used MM as an example, I realize there are lots of other fine examples..)

Some people are misinformed. After all, when you consider that Southern Comfort has been French-owned for more than 10 years, the world appears to be a strnge place.

wow~ what an incredibly strange list of suggestions!

SPAM is always appropriate. Especially if you bring one of the Limited Edition 70th Anniversary cans...(but not the low sodium..not as a house gift!)


http://www.spam.com/seventy/

EK, you crack me up. Ah, but spam and beans ... there's a dish filled with nostalgia. At our house the spam was crusted with brown sugar ... and I lived to escargots and soft shell crabs, sushi and testicles, and many other delights that would have seemed very strange indeed in our house.

But I digress.

Must a house gift, even from an international traveler, be exotic? I can buy Jack Daniels on my street, too (or any brand of bourbon or other spirits made, I don't doubt) but please, when you come to visit, know that you are free to bring some along!

Now there's the other side: what would you bring when you go to visit an expat countryman? Americans abroad might like the Oreos or peanut butter or even the bourbon, if it's terribly pricey in their home away from home. Or ...?

I can buy Dewar's Scotch any time I want, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it if someone brings me a bottle as a gift.

I guess I'm missing the boat that a gift has to be something you can't buy on your own? Like the flowers, or nice chocolates I think giving someone flowers or candy is nice, but I don't know anyone who doesn't have access to buying them on their own. What am I missing here?