question for the Australians

[rm]

My Red Rock potato chips just came (aaaaah, life is better), and something odd just occured to me:

The entire time I was in Sydney I saw no sour cream. Not in the grocery store, and not in the one place that sold anything resembling Mexican food that I saw on my travels, and believe me, with your abundance of avocados I looked. Yet, here I am eating Sour Cream and Sweet Chili chips. So what's the deal? Am I just unobservant? Is Sydney weird? Or does sour cream only exist on your continent as powdered flavouring on chips?

Comments

[jamie]

Makes me wonder if it's like England. I posted a recipe not too long ago that called for sour cream and the Brits on my f-list bemoaned the lack of it in the grocers.

[confesstome.livejournal.com]

When we lived in Cameroon, I made homemade ice cream with sour cream by mistake. Weirdest tasting *ice cream* ever.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

Hah! Once, whilst in Canada, myself and my siblings picked fresh blueberries to make ice cream. My father used maple syrup instead of simple syrup or plain sugar . . . the result was "interesting."

[(Anonymous)]

The Brit grocers sell creme fraiche, but in my 3 years there, I don't recall seeing sour cream. We did eat at a horrible Mexican restaurant in Cambridge once, though. And they also have a Chili's in Cambridge. Not sure if either served sour cream.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, creme fraiche can be used interchangeably with sour cream in recipes (http://www.ochef.com/100.htm) so there's no real need to offer both. Since creme fraiche is the more useful and resilient, it's the one sensible supermarkets stock.

It's a bit unfair to call the Mexican restaurant in Cambridge horrible, when you consider how many Mexican restaurants there are in England to start with, and hence what the competition is like. It makes as much sense for me to complain about terrible Indian restaurants here in Austin, Texas.

—meta (http://www.pobox.com/~meta/)

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

It's on the supermarket shelves here. And the local grocer's.

But I am in Melbourne.

[darkdevotchka.livejournal.com]

Yep - Sour Cream is everywhere in Sydney -- convenience stores, supermarkets & 7-11's. I'm not sure where you were looking! Must've been a weird-arse grocery store :)