What to bring?

Food & Drink, Events and Entertainment
1
Hello all. Newbie here, coming out from the UK towards the end of March.

I was wondering what I should make an effort to bring with me as I leave the UK. We have a container of our household goods coming across, so I can take a bit of space to stock up on hard-to-find or expensive things.

I’ve already ordered Tiptree brown sauce, that is hard enough to find in the UK, but I was wondering, what do the Brits tend to ask visitors to bring with them? Marmalade? Yorkshire Tea? Tunnocks tea cakes?

Thanks

AJ

2
Baking cupbaord:-

Brown sugar

Golden syrup

Black treacle

Tubs of baking powder etc (comes in 10g packets here)

Food colouring/flavouring (e.g. vanilla (coolours are weak, flavours are in 1ml ampules)

Chocolate chips

Malt extract

Suet

Self-raising flour (although I only ever used plain with baking powder)

Strong flour for bread (I have found some in a random Turkish shop though)

Medicine cupboard

Paracetamol, ibuprofin, children’s pain killers (very expensive here)

Canestan

Lemsip

Children’s toothpaste (tends to be lower fluoride)

Food cupboard

Crisps with flavours

Quaffing chocolate (your Cadbury’s) especially for kiddos

Lemon curd

Worcheess...worccccess... worescg.. Lee and Perrin’s (getable but not easy to find)

Peanut butter (ibid)

Marmite

Crumpet

Tea

Eccles cakes

Etc

3
Tea. Regular bags here contain perhaps 1/5 of the tea content that Yorkshire Tea bags do. Therefore locally sold tea is very close to water.

4
Depends where you are. We are near the French border and both Intermarche and Carrefour have UK sections and I was pleasantly surprised to find Yorkshire tea, among many other items. Otherwise the list above is pretty good.

Oh and for fun, the UK section is often combined with the US foods. An Anglo mélange - with some odd pairings.

5
https://www.facebook.com/yorkshirete...1274920106551/

Do it for Yorkshire!!!!!

6
Aspirin

7
Aspirin, ibuprofen and paracetamol, because even the generics are stupidly expensive here. Although we get them from Germany which is also cheaper.

Marmite. Lasts for years. You can get it here, but it's expensive. (Best place is Indian shops).

Suet. Just doesn't exist, so far as I can tell. Black treacle and golden syrup. Brown sauce, malt vinegar.

If I could only stock up on one of the above, it'd be suet. Everything else I can substitute for. I get my Ceylon tea from Germany in bulk. It may seem heretical, but it's even better than Yorkshire tea.

8
Nandos sauce!!

9

I assume you’re bringing your beds and bed linen with you because Swiss sizes are not the same as UK.

Branston pickle
Mint sauce if you like that

And yes, on the medicine side if you already take prescription medication then make sure to stock up a bit on those so you have a supply while you sort out a new GP and they assess you for what you’d need here.

Baking - if you’re into mince pies and make them yourself then either stock up on jars of ready made mince meat or get the mixed fruit packages necessary to make from scratch. Same for Christmas puddings; they can be found here, but are very expensive.

10
You can get fresh suet from a butcher and grate it yourself but it’s not quite as convenient as the packet stuff.

11
1. Plain chocolate HobNobs. I make do (actually, it's even better!) by buying HobNobs (called Oat Bakes) from Müller and melting plain chocolate and spreading it on really thickly.

2. Lyle's Golden Syrup.

12
Hi,

I lurk much more than I post but we arrived nearly 2 years ago (brought lockdown with us, whoop). I find spices most difficult to source in normal supermarkets so if you have particular things that you like (for example we use ras-el-hanout), I would bring those too. It will also give you time to find out where to source what you need here.

Oh and I would stock up on underwear - including boxer shorts, socks, tights etc.

13
Something wrong with you mate, the only reason a jar of marmite lasts a couple of weeks in my house is because it is rationed.

14
Marmite would last for centuries in this house.

15
Today’s winning post.

16
You can get Lyle's Golden Syrup and Black Treacle at Globus and in some bookstores that sell English books. Same with some other things mentioned above, but not always.

For spices (and some other things), your average Indian/Sri Lankan/Turkish or even Balkans shop is usually a good source.

17
Personally I find the quality of spices in Coop, Alnatura, and Migros to be way superior to these alternatives...

I'd agree with most of the above. Some additions:

I prefer the Sainsbury's food storage/freezing bags to the ones here

Stationary if you like it, choice here very limited or overly expensive. UK gift bags are so much prettier for example.

Fudge

Shortbread

Your favourite hand cream (in my case Aveeno)

18
Again, depends where you are... but, Intermarche tends to have better spices, better selection of them, and better variety than most Swiss supers, but if you fancy a curry, there's a shop in the La Combe mall (Migros) in Nyon that sells over a hundred different sorts of curry spices, and a bunch of none curry Indian, Bangladeshi, and Indonesian spices. I made a wrong turn looking for the restroom, and came across Spice n'tease, which, while not having the usual Indian groceries, staples, and cooking utensils I had gotten used to finding in New York, London, Tokyo, and Jakarta - the collection of spices in this store is stunning... and displayed in huge glorious piles of gold, brown, tan, rust, orange, and yellow... probably my favorite shop in Nyon.

19
Everyone's going to answer you differently on this, except for the over the counter medicine items such paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin, throat lozenges, etc. A former member of this forum said the thing she missed most about the UK is Boots Chemists. British chocolate is available at loads of places, especially Aldi.

Dare's right about many of those 'hard to find items' being readily available in unusual places, such Orell Füssli book store selling HP Sauce and Golden Syrup, etc in the English books section.

The items I still fill my case with when I come back from the UK are: mint flavoured chocolate, Original Source Mint shower gel, ibuprofen, supermarket own brand Strepsils, antihistamines, underwear particularly bras, and winter clothing, particularly jackets. After spending ages looking at jackets over £100 here, I bought exactly what I wanted for £30 in Asda in the UK.

If you're a woman and like colourful clothes, I'd stock up on all the basics in the UK as the fashion here can be very neutral and beige. I always do a shop in George at Asda, Matalan and Next just for colours which I struggle to find here. Also with footwear, women's UK 7 and above is limited in available styles.

20
Same in this house... but it's still perfectly edible when you find a jar 5 years beyond it's sell by date hidden behind the ski boots in the cellar.