I hope this doesn’t qualify as one of those horrible taggity memey things, but here goes.
Katie and I were talking recently in the comments on this blog entry about my wanton garlic-importing ways, and how this fact has been written down on my permanent record, which will probably one day prevent me from going to the finest culinary school on any continent.
Anyway, turns out Katie’s got a tale to tell about dulce de leche, the Argentine equivalent of Chile’s manjar. Which is a funny way of putting it, since most know what dulce de leche is and manjar is much less well-known. And this reminds me, by the way of an awesome American couple I met in Iquique (who seem to be in Japan right now), who insisted on calling it Man Jar, as though it were a certain surrealist/dadist artist, as opposed to a goopy milky fudgy spreadable sweet.
Ahem. So, stuff you’ve tried to bring aboard a plane that’s been taken from you, or that you’ve seen taken from someone else. Makes for a good story. So here’s what you do. You blog about it, then you leave me a comment here, and then I pimp you out to my readers. It’s great fun. And I got the idea of this “group blog post” from here, the blog of another American expat living in Chile, who’s part of (it seems) a tight circle of friends who respond prolifically to her requests for group blog posts.
Don’t let me down, people.
Here we go. Group blog post: The Great Seizing, or how they took my stuff away (or somebody else’s) and it made us all laugh and/or cry.
Spill your story on your blog, leave a comment here and I’ll make you marginally famouser than you were before. If you don’t have a blog I guess you can leave your story in the comments. Holy moderated comments, batman.
Go!
Alas, I have been incredibly successful at smuggling. It’s my Peggy Hill face. I brought in 15 jars of caviar from Azerbaijan, and that’s not the least of it.
But if it makes you feel any better, dulce de leche was responsible for about 15 pounds that I gained back in 1976 🙂
xox yr cronopio
So I post the link here? Let me know if I am doing the wrong thing!
http://dancing-with-molly.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-escape.html
It’s not wrong, but I had intended just for people to leave a comment, and then I will compile a list. I’ll still do that in your case, if that’s okay. And I’m thrilled to see you seem to be going public! And also, very funny story. The encargo. That’s probably another group blog post right there!
I wrote one! http://abbyline.blogspot.com/2009/05/owl-scissors-and-tylenol-never-to-be.html
My wife Carrie, daughter in law and granddaughter and I were traveling back to Alaska after visiting my Mother in Alpena, the small town in northern Michigan where I grew up. We’d had a nice visit and had really enjoyed the backyard produce at the local farmers market. The best were the juicy home grown tomatoes. They were so good I’d bought a bunch to take home and as we had to over night in Saginaw before our flight to Alaska I brought a loaf of white bread, a jar of mayonnaise, packets of salt and an old serrated knife to slice the tomatoes for tomato sandwiches for our dinner. Yum they were good! The next day at the airport I asked Carrie to grab the plastic grocery bag of tomatoes as we went though security. I headed to one line and Carrie to another. I noticed the conveyor stop in Carries line as her things went through and a crowd of TSA agents gathered. Is this yours? the agent asked as he held up the bag of tomatoes. As she nodded yes the agent pulled out the 12 inch serrated knife I had forgot to throw away at the hotel. My wife’s head slowly swiveled searching me out and felt her death ray burn scars across my chest as she locked in on me. The TSA supervisor said that he was supposed to make a report on a weapon this size and would normally call the county Sheriff for back up but “I can see ya got some tomatas there and I can understand how that would happen so I’m just going to throw the knife away. Is zat all right?” Ya gotta love small towns and common sense. The burns are starting to heal now and Carrie can almost laugh about it but she still won’t carry any of my bags through security.
Security at La Guardia confiscated my Bath & Body Works lotion on my return trip from New York. That was fully one-half of the reasons that Canadians even go to the States: 1) Bath & Body Works, 2) Mountain Dew with caffeine.
Like I'm so sure I'm going to release raspberry-vanilla scented terrorism… on my OWN country. *grumble*
If *I* was what was removed by the airport authorities, would that count 🙂 I’m no clove of garlic… 🙂
Wrote one 🙂
http://www.richardstupart.com/2009/05/07/delayed-departure/
All right. I just posted 3 of my confiscation stories, varying from bear mace in Canada to lego swords in Morocco (not mine, my kid’s) to Welsh butter in Seattle. At least these didn’t get me put on any lists!
I just posted “Dulce de Leche: Gone But Not Forgotten.”
This sounds like fun. I’ve enjoyed reading about other’s experiences and thought I’d share my own with today’s post “Doesn’t everyone carry machetes in their suitcase?”
A friend, who shall remain nameless, was smuggling some liquor into a certain dry middle eastern country. The customs official confiscated her booze, then handed her his business card and whispered, “I sell liquor. Call me.”
wow – this made for a great group blog! I enjoyed reading all the stories.
Last July I went to Chile for a little while after finishing up a semester in Mendoza, and after reading all these posts about SAG, I guess I'm really lucky I didn't end up with several things confisticated when I entered Chile. I knew the dried/packaged mate was allowed, but I wasn't 100% sure about dulce de leche (again, packaged so it was probably ok).
The really bad one was the homemade dulce de membrillo – pretty sure that would count as fruit. But I couldn't not take it, since it was a gift from my host mom! Plus, I also had a nice wooden mate from Argentina that was my gift to myself … oops!
So when I got on the bus to Chile I kind of realized the problems, and decided the best thing was to declare everything on the forms and hope for the best. Surprisingly, it went fine – they didn't search my bags and I'm not sure they even looked at the declaration form.
Anyway – you have a great blog & I really enjoy reading it!
I should notify my friend about this.