No Pancakes

I really miss my normal diet. They have pancakes here but not the kind you get at IHOP. They are more like crepes. I went to a restaurant that advertised Western Food and ordered pancakes and got crepes. I told them these are not the type of pancakes typically eaten by Americans. They had no idea. I asked for butter and syrup but they only had margarine and honey. The margarine doesn't taste like margarine in USA and the honey is very runny and not because it's hot. Even at room temperature it is still runny.

I found an A&W stand so I had high hopes since food at McDonalds and KFC is the same with perhaps a few additional local food items added to the menu. I saw they were advertising an authentic Coney dog. I've been to Coney Island in New York city and I've had a real Coney dog and they are delicious but this was nothing like them.

First of all, it's a chicken hotdog, not a beef hotdog. Second there's no spicy mustard or yellow mustard and no sauerkraut, relish or chopped onions. Instead they but hot-sauce and mayonnaise on it. It tastes OK but it just makes me miss the real thing even more.

Speaking of beef hotdogs, when I lived in Phoenix Arizona, I lived next to a Sonic drive-thru and the chili-dog supreme was so good it was evil. It called out to me everyday to eat it and I crave it even now.

I did manage to find beef hotdogs tucked in the back corner of a huge frozen food section of all chicken hotdogs. When I brought them home to eat them, Kelly's mom asked that we remove them from the house. Buddhists do not eat beef and she wasn't about to have her microwave contaminated. Sigh.

They don’t drink milk here. They also don’t like things to be too sweet for example the popular chocolate milk is called Milo and it’s less sweet than cold or hot chocolate in USA. Instead of Gatorade they have 100-Plus which is less sweet.

I miss all of the snack cakes like Ding-Dongs, Ho-Hos, Ring Dings, Yodels, Krumpets, etc. I can find none of them here. I ask for them by name and they look at me like I’m crazy. I also like soft and chewy cookies. Here they like their cookies hard and dry.

Tomorrow is November 25 and it will be Thanksgiving but they don’t celebrate it here obviously as it is only a USA holiday as far as I know. They also don’t eat turkey. Kelly has never had turkey.

I also don’t like eating fish for breakfast. Here they’ll mix fish, chicken and pork in one meal. Obviously there is nothing wrong that but it’s not typically done in the USA. You choose one meat for your meal and stick with that.

I’m also getting sick of eating rice everyday.

I also miss my Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream! I have not had decent ice-cream since I got here over 4 months ago.

Today I had a craving for New Jersey pizza, the best pizza in the world (so I'm told) because it is made by immigrated Italians so it just like the pizza in Italy (so I'm told). Oh sure you can get pizza anywhere in the USA and there are even gourmet pizza places but I still prefer the flat crust and stringy greasy cheese of good ole NJ pizza. There is pizza here in Malaysia but only in the big cities and only at Pizza Hut as far as I can tell.

The foods you will find in Penang Malaysia are primarily local foods. You'll have a hard-time finding other international foods such as European (Italian, French, Spanish) or South American like Mexican, Australian or any other food besides Asian food.

You will find western food here but for the most part its flavor and recipe has been assimilated into the tastes of Malaysia. They don't go a long way into finding out how to make western food properly. They may just have a picture and try to create something that looks like western food or maybe someone who visited North America comes back with a vague recollection of what they ate.

I had fries today at a local hawker stand and they served them with chili sauce and some kind of mayo sauce. They didn't even have ketchup. Ketchup is yet another thing that is hard to find here. I wonder what they would say if they saw me put ketchup on my scrambled eggs?

I have never been home-sick until now. I really do miss my usual diet. I’ve adapted a little to the climate and food but not entirely.

When I return to the USA one of the first things I'm going to do is have a meal with all of the foods I've missed starting with Ben & Jerry's ice-cream, beef-hotdog with yellow mustard and sauerkraut/relish/chopped onions, pancakes with butter and syrup, whole milk and ring-dings. Oh and let's not forget the Turkey sandwich.