What is "Scottish" food?

Part 1: How do you know what "Scottish" food is? 

If I'm to talk about "Scottish" food, I first need to know how to define "Scottish" food. Considering that I've lived here for about 3 months, I don't really feel qualified to answer that question. Let's start with a question where I could be considered more of an expert: What is American food? It's still a hard question to answer because it is so diverse and depends on where you live. There are some classically American foods (hamburgers and hot dogs), but outside of that, it can be hard to say what is truly American.

I've discovered an easy way to tell: Go to a foreign country and look at the appropriate section of the "Foreign Foods" aisle. This is what other people want to eat from your country and what expatriates miss from their home country. In Edinburgh, there are specific stores for foods from some countries: Indian Market, Polish Market, Oriental Market. Luckily, there is a store, Lupe Pintos, that specializes in all the others (Mexican, American, Italian, French, Spanish, etc.). Here is a selection of "American" foods from that store: Full-sized bags of chocolate chips, Hershey's syrup, canned pumpkin, marshmallow fluff, syrup and pancake mix, steak sauce, plain yellow mustard, instant pudding mix, Lucky Charms, and ranch dressing. Of course, there are other things that you can find in the regular grocery store, with the most popular being peanut butter.

American section at Lupe Pintos -
All sorts of stuff that I don't eat,
but that is apparently associated with the USA

Very expensive bacon-flavored popcorn in the US section

I'm also baffled by some of the food you find in the American section - What must people here think of us? I think the bacon-flavored popcorn was the weirdest. I don't know anyone who eats actually eats that in the US. Same goes for the mixed peanut butter and jelly jars. There are also some interesting ideas of what are American flavors (cheese & New York deli relish?).

The next post is on Scottish food - and I'm defining Scottish food simply as the food that I see all the time and the food that I eat and see my friends eat when we go out together. I'm sure there will be more posts later as I figure out what is actually the food that everyone here eats and what is confined to my weird friends :)

Not quite sure what "American Bubble Chips" are either...