McVitie’s Chocolate Chip Cookies - 232g

In Britain, McVitie's is the name on a good half of the biscuit aisle. The chocolate chip cookies are the everyday packet, not the posh one. They go in lunchboxes, in desk drawers and on the arm of the sofa at eleven in the morning.

People in Canada go looking for them because a taste you grew up with is very hard to replace with a similar one. Similar is not the point. You want the one that tasted like after-school and a rerun of something you were not supposed to watch.

The 232g packet is a proper cupboard packet. Fold the end over, or tip them into a tin, and keep them somewhere cool and dry. A quick dunk in tea is allowed. A long dunk is a gamble, and the bottom of the mug always wins.

They tend to travel home in the same basket as a box of British tea and a packet of digestives or Hobnobs, because nobody has ever stopped at one kind of McVitie's either.