The world has entered a new era; America has reached a defining milestone in its history; suddenly there is light at the end of the tunnel.

But never mind all that: let me tell you about Heinz salad cream, McVities Chocolate Hobnobs, the Guardian crossword and other things of great moment.

When Pam and I got married last September, we didn't make a big thing of wedding presents. We'd both been through it all before, and we had most of the stuff we needed.

But one of the most thoughtfully chosen and welcome gifts came from our British neighbours, Vic and Polly. It was a 425-gramme squeezy bottle of Heinz salad cream, with an extra little green label explaining to explain to ignorant Americans what it was.

If I were ever on Death Row and they came to take my final lunch order, I'd settle not for lobster thermidor and a gallon bucket of Häagen-Dazs Rocky Road, as so many heinous but unimaginative felons do, but for a nice salad cream sandwich on wholemeal bread still warm from the oven.

Incidentally, did you know where the name Häagen-Dazs comes from? Let's ask Wikipedia.

Contrary to appearances, the name is not Scandinavian; it is simply two made-up words meant to look Scandinavian to American eyes (in fact, the digraphs "äa" and "zs" are a not part of any native words in any of the Scandinavian languages).

This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding. Mattus included an outline map of Scandinavia on early labels, as well as the names of Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm, to reinforce the Scandinavian theme. A name was created by reversing the name of Duncan Hines (Huncan-Dines"), an original potential marketer of the product. When that deal didn't materialize the name was manipulated to sound Scandinavian.

The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an 'a' with an umlaut/diaeresis) is used in the spelling of the German, Estonian, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish languages, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Estonian, Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has a short a, hard g, and a final s sound.

One close real name to the fake Häagen is the rare Norwegian first name Haagen. It also bears a resemblance to Den Haag, which is "The Hague" in Dutch. Dazs does not mean anything even in Hungarian despite the "zs" grapheme, and sounds too unfamiliar even to be a name. The closest real word in Hungarian is "darázs", which means "wasp".

A further step in branding is the renaming of the Teatro Calderón in Madrid, Spain to Teätro Häagen-Dazs Calderón.^[4] There is no ä in the Spanish alphabet.

Isn't that fascinating? Drily humorous, slightly pedantic, and obsessed with trivial linguistic details - it could have been written by me.

Anyway, back to salad cream, the one thing I miss most about British cuisine. Before I came here, I used to get through a bottle a week, hooked on its richly moreish mayonnaise mouthfeel with added vinegary bite, compatible with everything from french fries to Ritz crackers.

I find ranch dressing makes an acceptable substitute, but it's not the same, and I miss salad cream. I asked Vic and Polly where they'd obtained our wedding present and filed the name away for future reference: International Foods, a grocery store in nearby Metairie.

Last week, Pam and I finally got round to paying a visit. It was a cornucopia, with a whole big section devoted to British foods I hadn't set eyes on for six months or more.

There was Marmite, the bitter, salt-laden sandwich spread made from the stuff that leaks out of oilwells and forms festering puddles on the ground in Texas. Marmite splits Britain neatly down the middle: either you'd sell your grey-haired, twinkly-eyed grandmother for a jar, or you detest it with a passion beyond words.

Even the manufacturer cheerfully admits that Marmite is not everyone's cup of tea. Its website, Marmite.com, describes the product as "noxious gunk", and continues:

Eat Marmite? You'd rather rip the wings off live chickens. You'd rather be stripped naked in public. You'd rather swallow rat's tails and snail shells... Enough already! We get the picture.

Next to the Marmite was a stack of McVities Chocolate Hobnobs. These delectable oaty biscuits, or cookies if you're reading this in America, were the British marketing sensation of the 1980s when they made their debut. Over one hundred times more addictive than pure crystal meth, they flew off the shelves as fast as supermarkets could restock them.

As we stood in line for the checkout, I felt a sense of empathy for the other unnamed Brits who were presumably helping to keep the store in business. There aren't many of us in New Orleans - this is not Manhattan or Orlando, where half the population seems to hail from the UK.

I also reflected on the relative ease of being an expat in the twenty-first century. You no longer have to do without the things you miss most, the little icons that bring a twinge of... well, not homesickness, but nostalgia for what you've left behind in your quest for a new life.

Today, I can call my parents for eight cents a minute or share trivial details of my life on this blog or Facebook. In the past, I might have subscribed to my favourite newspaper and received yellowing copies by surface mail, three months late. Now I can read them online. My favourite is The Guardian, which even (joy of joys) decided a few months ago to stop charging for its crossword - something else I no longer have to do without.

A few months ago, passing through Washington's Dulles airport, I found a machine in a newsagent's that would print a while-you-wait, same-day copy of any of 150 international newspapers, from The Sun to the South China Morning Post, all for just five dollars.

As I reached for my wallet, the guy behind the counter noticed me and shook his head. "I wouldn't if I were you," he warned. "You'll miss your flight. They can take up to an hour to print."

So this technology may still be in its infancy, but one day soon I'll be able to stroll a few blocks and come back with my copy of The Guardian, literally hot off the presses.

Things have come a long way since those first settlers made what would almost certainly be a one-way journey, severing all ties with their past lives. I may have chosen to live 4,633 miles away from my birthplace as the crow flies, but compared to them I have it easy.