The concept of “home” is getting a little hazy, considering I’ve been in the United States for only three weeks over the past 28 months …

But you know what I mean.

We haven’t done a list for a while, and we can do one on food and drink I consume here in the UAE … that I do not consume when in California.

To wit:

1.  McVitie’s dark-chocolate “digestive” cookies. I go through a couple of packages of these per week. I think I bumped into McVitie’s (a veddy British brand) while in Hong Kong. My recollection is that I wanted cookies, and this “digestive” part of the brand suggested “health food” … and there I went. They are fairly bland, round cookies, but that layer of dark chocolate on the top makes them very nice.

2. Lamb korma. I’ve slowed on my lamb korma intake since Year 1, when I was eating it about once every two weeks. In the States, we don’t eat much lamb. In this part of the world, everybody eats lamb all the time, and the Indians put it in a sort of yogurt sauce … and it’s really nice over rice. In California, Indian is rare and expensive.

3. Naan bread with cheese. More Indian. Vaguely like a quesadilla, bready with a mild cheese, and very good but also very filling. You probably can’t finish your lamb korma if you had too much naan-with-cheese bits.

4. Tea. I drink a lot of tea here. Hot tea. The queer thing is, I don’t really like it. I drink it mostly because it’s so easy. Fifteen feet from my desk is one of those bottled-water dispensers that gives you hot water from the red button, and bingo, hot tea. It gives me something to drink that has zero calories. (I add no sugar.) It’s bitter. It’s not really fun. I sometimes think I will continue to drink tea when I leave here … but that’s not true at all, because I don’t drink tea on my off days here.

5.  Arab flat bread. Included with all sorts of meals here … and it’s awful, in my opinion. Flat and tasteless, but it can be break-a-tooth hard if its get a bit thick, and approximately 60 seconds after it comes off the griddle it’s cold and stale and breaking to pieces. I eat it, then, because it’s served to me. I would never order it.

6. Chicken tikka. The mild variety, with the yellow curry (malai). It’s available at the supermarket here, in the hot food section. I like it OK, and it’s a good snack at night, and white-meat chicken … not exactly fatty. Can be good, actually, when it’s warm and fresh, not that I ever eat it that way. (Cold and days-old.) Not sure you can get it in the States anyplace outside an Indian resto.

7. Pickled carrots and picked turnips. A Middle East kind of thing. I don’t really like pickled anything, other than pickles, but in regional restaurants here you’re likely to get a plate of pickled things while waiting for your mixed grill.

8. Hummus.  I like this. Mashed chickpeas with sesame-seed puree and garlic. Very common to all regional restos but still a bit of a curiosity in the States. I mean, you can get it there, but you probably won’t as often as you do here. Can be hard to digest, like peanut butter.

9. Kiwi-lime juice. They love their lime juice in this country, sometimes serving it with mint. I like the kiwi-lime, which I can buy in little bottles. I know it’s just sugar water and green dye, but it tastes kiwi-ish, and I love kiwis. Not much lime or kiwi juice, in SoCal.

10. Dates. I eat a few of those, here … but I never ate them in California and never will. Dates are one of the three food products that occur naturally in the UAE (and I can’t think of the other two), and the taste is … OK … but it is overpoweringly sweet and gooey, and it’s one of those things that you have had enough of after one teeny bite. I will bump into more dates here, perhaps at parties, but I will never seek them out.