but you can make your own pickled onions.

but we do have regular requests from American friends for Cadbury chocolate and recently sent a box of Thorntons variety as a birthday gift. Also Tetley tea. We get Coast soap bars in return plus root beer & cinnamon sweets. Now found a source in the UK for A & W root beer in cans!

Japanese friends politely send hints for Nescafe instant coffee powder (not granules) in return for Tokyo Disneyland goodies. You need a MISS to help you with your search for proper UK produce.

* that would be a Massive International Swap Shop

The main priority is a supply of PG Tips. I currently have about 1,200 tea bags stashed away in my cellar. There's an Indian bloke selling them in a shop near the main railway station in Munich, but he charges something outrageous like €5 for 80.

Otherwise:

* Baked beans (I have tracked down a reasonably priced supply, but the sauce is a bit insipid. However, I discovered this can be fixed by adding tomato puree.)
* Prawn cocktail crisps
* Brown sauce
* Crumpets (I have taken to making my own when I can be arsed).

.... Out here in Singapore we do pretty well - no PG Tips, but I get Tea bags from Marks & Spencer (who I also use for cereal). Also the local supermarket chain carries a fair amount of Waitrose stuff. Most of the usual suspects are available, but when I am back in the UK, I do tend to go for Cadbury's - we get the Australian made stuff, which isn't as nice......

I mean I used to LOVE it growing up but I think it is an actual fact that it now 'meets the EU definition of chocolate' - a change the UK government lobbied on for many many years - it is vegetable or palm oil flavoured to taste like chocolate nowadays, thus compounding the recent horror of the hostile takeover...

So if Cadbury's choccie is STILL better than the local produce that's pretty awe inspiring. I strongly recommend the Fairtrade choccie from the Co-op by the way, its lovely

but what about is displaced Northerners cast drift in that London.
things that the eel botherers have never heard of or just don't do right:
decent pork pies.
bread and or bread cakes (some say tea cakes)
vanilla slices
beer that's poured properly ( i have got use to this one as a bit of practice)
yorkshire mixtures
staffordshire oat cakes
scraps
curd tart
and of course apart from at home a decent Yorkshire pudding is hard to find.

Also in exile in Singapore....as chrisf says, you can get most stuff here. Except Jaffa Cakes. You used to be able to get them, but not now. Where have they gone?!?!? I need Jaffa Cakes! They're the healthy alternative to custard creams!

I also used to miss real ale...Old Speckled Hen is widely available, but that's all. But then I found a really great shop that stocks the best selection of British beer I have ever seen...including in UK supermarkets. Of course, 34 degree heat isn't really the best climate for enjoying a bottle of Spitfire or Chiswick Bitter...but I struggle through.

When my parents lived abroad (10 years in Bahrain 1980 - 1990) we could get more or less everything, and what they didn't get they didn't seem to miss.

I missed proper tea though, rather than that awful Liptons shit, so for me it would have to be Yorkshire tea. You simply can't get a decent cup of tea outside the UK.

A couple of years ago my dear old Mum visited me in Beijing. Not to be outwitted by pesky customs, she froze a full-size Melton Mowbray pork pie and popped it in her suitcase just before leaving home for Heathrow. It barely defrosted in a chilly cargo hold and was still pretty icy on arrival chez James EB.

Mrs Asia, Queen of the Golden Pork Pie Triangle.

Can you freeze pickled onions?

I've just returned home to Berlin from a trip to London. Whilst there, I indulged heartily in the kind of glorious gustatory goodness that can only be found along the highways and byways of bountiful Britain. It was a total glut of doner kebabs,mushy peas, fish and chips, M&S sandwiches, curries, 'proper' bread (ie Sainsbury's bloomers), Branstons, Heinz beans... naturally, the trousers are a little tighter and the breathing a bit more laboured. But my downfall on this visit were pies. Huge great whacking Cornish pasties at every railway station! Ginsters after a late night out! I know I am very much at the lower end of the gastronomic scale here, but I miss this stuff awfully. I did manage to pack a couple of jars of Patak's Mango pickle - an essential foodstuff IMO - to bring back with me, to liven up the daily wurst and schnitzel.

Oddly enough, in most of the Oriental and Asian shops dotted around town, one can quite easily pick up PG Tips, Heinz beans, HP and Encona hot pepper sauce, so it's not too bad.

When I was a younger man, and spent a few years living in the Americas, I really missed proper pints of Guinness. On my return to Ireland, I nearly killed myself downing the stuff.

There's some in my fridge at home right now.

Available in all goood supermarkets and some rubbish ones as well.

now that PG Tips, Dairy Milk, Worcester sauce, Sharwoods curry, Patak's chutney, etc are available locally, my wish list comprises Marmite, dark chocolate digestives, and decent marmalade. The latter I tend to make myself using that Homecook prepared stuff and adding loads of lemon juice, brown sugar, and whisky. Hummus is also a problem but sometimes available in Lebenese places. Pricey though and not always that good. Lidl actually does English special weeks, good for tea and biccies and cheese, less so for pies, and the mustard is awful.

... Tesco has opened a chain of small supermarkets called Fresh & Easy. Although they sell hardly any imported stuff, they do have back bacon. If you've ever tried American bacon (cooked to a crisp, all fat and no meat) then you'll understand that back bacon is like manna from heaven to me.

Regular supermarkets here now sell PG Tips and Taylor's tea and Cost Plus sells loads of different Cadbury's chocolate, although you still pay through the nose for 'em.

Nick - I found a ploughman's pickle made by Norfolk Manor which is just like Branston's and far cheaper than going to the English shop.

Couple of years ago a work colleague went to USA on holiday and came back with some chocolates made by Cadbury called Slow Poke which caused much merriment as in "would you like a slow poke?". They were very nice and as i go out to USA on business at least twice a year I am frequently asked to see if I can find them. No joy whatsoever so this may be where the MISS can come into play.
On the same subject Cadburys may not be chocolate under EU guidelines but what the hell is Hersheys? It tastes like sick!!

I'm not in exile, but when I'm away from Scotland I really miss a pint of Tennants. I'm normally a bitter man, but do enjoy the old Tennants. It's still pretty hard to get hold of in Yorkshire. My old local used to have it on tap, but it has now sadly closed.

The supermarkets in the Cayman Islands do quite well with British products (we even get Irn Bru and haggis), but for some reason there is a blind spot with decent tea and beer. No one is allowed to visit us from the UK without a large box of M&S Extra Strong tea bags taking up room in their luggage.

We are moving to Bosnia later this year - I suspect the picture there will be rather different.

I shared a house in rootin' Tooting in the early 90's with 2 pals, a Scot and an Irishman.

If any of us went home to either Troon, Maghrafelt or Ponteland (me) we could expect carrier bags full of soda bread and Tayto Crisps (Ireland), or square sausage and Tunnocks Wafers (Scotland), or stotty cakes and Black Bullets (Newcastle) to be manhandled through the door on the wanderers return.

A friend emigrated to America from Australia some years ago and would frequently ask for some Tim Tams to be shipped over; for non-Antipodeans, it's two chocolate biscuits with a layer of chocolate between, coated with chocolate. Cherry Ripes, Violet Crumbles and vegemite were also requested.

Piccalilli is dead easy to make. Loads of veg diced up small, brine it overnight then drain and pop in a pan and add enough white and malt vinegar to cover, bring to the boil. Make a paste of half a tin of mustard powder, 3 tbsps of cornflour and 1 tbsp of turmeric plus a load of pepper, stir into the veg and then pop into (hot) jars.

Branston pickle is very similar but with things like molasses in it. I've done it once and it was great but bloody messy for some reason. Lots of good recipes on t'Interweb.

Fraser'll tell you how to make pork pies.

Any good pork pie recipe starts with half a dozen trotters.

on a campsite in the South of France way back when. All the Brits there missed Marmite, Bacon, cheddar & digestive biscuits.
In our third year there, one of us had to go home every week, and came back loaded with the aforementioned goodies. Once we could get them on a regular basis, we soon stopped asking for them. Mind you - I could have killed for a curry.

All the cafes aspire to stylishness here in Auckland. Proper coffee, "gourmet" sandwiches, cleanliness.

Sometimes I hanker for the griminess and the artery-hardening delights of the British greasy.

I lived in Paris for 6 years and the one thing we used to bring back from the UK regularly was a good stock of Vimto. Perfect hot, cold, with Perrier to make fizzy - delicious.

As already mentioned, it is odd that the French eat the most disgustng meat products (Pig snout? Cow's head?) but don't produce bacon.

After a couple of years of sausageless misery I was able to find a place online that makes a very passable stab at a Lincolnshire sausage. I can also get back bacon and pork pies from them. And needless to say, I have a cupboard full of Branston Pickle and picalilli....
What I can't get, however, no matter how hard I look, is Batemans beer.

At last

A subject I can comment on knowlegably!

Tough to find Ribena in Northern Virginia. And as referenced above, good "proper" bacon so I can have a good, "proper" bacon buttie.
Brown sauce is a tough ask as well.

I am lucky that one of the local grocery stores - Wegmans - has a nice European aisle, so no shortage of Hobnobs or some other delights. Bovril is a bastard to find, as is Marmite. Right now my supplier is my friend who brings in Vegemite and Bovril from Australia.

But I can live with that. What I really miss, and can't find without driving 60 miles to the Irish shop in Fredericksburg, is Smarties. That, and a pint of Bitter, drawn in a 20 oz pint mug, at the right temperature.

I used to get a reasonable supply of UK essentials in Menlo Park, and a place on Geary in San Francisco, but they were expensive.
Australian supermarkets carry Branston and HP sauce (or a reasonable approximation at least), so I'm sorted for everything bar a UK beer supply. And a decent pub to put it in. Aussie beers are ok, at least when they're doing the german styles (Matilda Bay and James Squire), but I do miss Marstons Pedigree.