My American Grocery List

• Corn Tortillas – CATEGORY: NOT COST-EFFECTIVE IN CANADA. Plain old corn tortillas. Buy ’em here and you’re lucky to find a little five-pack for a few dollars. In Walmart in Montana we get FIVE POUND bags for about five bucks – and they actually last for two years at room temperature before getting a little dry.

• Beaver Ghost Pepper Mustard – CATEGORY: NOT AVAILABLE HERE. It’s really good, and I haven’t seen it north of the border (which doesn’t mean it’s not sold somewhere; I just haven’t found it). Complicating things a little is that the last time I bought it, it was at Walmart in Kalispell MT – and so far I haven’t see it at Walmart in Havre, just over the mountains. Maybe Kalispell doesn’t carry it anymore either, just have to check next time I’m down (as of this writing we’ve been shut out of the US for nearly two years thanks to… yeah… that thing). And yes, I could buy a case directly from Beaver, but I’d catch all kinds of hell over it because I’m the only person in the house who eats mustard, pickles, etc.

• Kool-Aid – CATEGORY: WHAT THE OFFICIAL FUCK? The classic little 3.6gm/.13oz packets of colour and flavour that you dump into water – along with a truly astonishing amount of sugar. They stopped selling it north of the border. They still sell other variations, presumably because they’re more profitable: Little bottles of aspartame-sweetened drops (AH HATES aspartame) and the “pre-mixed” variation that’s simply the same coloured powder – added to a big can of sugar. I think this is a shocking racket; a trick to make you buy severely overpriced sugar. We mix the little packets with water and let everyone sweeten their own, usually with Sugar Twin (saccharine, which, curiously, appears to still be illegal in the US. Go figure.). And don’t you dare judge me. Sometimes you just want something cold and brightly coloured and fruity and sweet and sour (because I usually top it up with a little extra dash of citric acid), and if you’re not guzzling a half-pound of sugar, where’s the harm?

• Mezzetta Pepperoncini – CATEGORY: NOT COST EFFECTIVE IN CANADA. Way bigger jars at a much lower price in MT.

• PermaFrost Schnapps – CATEGORY: NOT AVAILABLE HERE. Which is really weird, because it’s made in Canada, but apparently only for export. Cinnamon and mint flavour. Keep your comments to yourself.

• Everclear – CATEGORY: NOT COST EFFECTIVE IN CANADA. This is the only thing we buy duty-free when returning home – big-ass 1.75 litre bottles of almost pure ethanol for less than twenty bucks. We use it for making liqueurs and the cleaning tasks that I used to buy little bottles of isopropyl alcohol for. This way it’s both cheaper and safer to keep around, as there’s no safe level of isopropanol ingestion.

• Collard Greens – CATEGORY: TOO AMERICAN FOR CANUCKS. I mean, maybe if I scoured the farmers’ markets around here someone will have fresh ones, but maybe they just won’t grow this far north. I get that they’re a southern thing, but if Walmart in MT carries them canned, I’m in. I really like the Glory brand.

• Pickled Okra – CATEGORY: TOO AMERICAN FOR CANUCKS. I think it’s a southern thing too; see above.

• Dobie Pads – CATEGORY: WHAT THE MODIFIED FUCK? The little 3M dish scrubbers, a sponge with a non-scratching plastic scouring pad wrapped around it. Just like Kool-Aid – something I’ve bought here in Upper Soviet Canuckistan, like, forever, then one day I couldn’t.