the things you miss

I'm sitting here with a cup of tea and a pang of disquiet. Why, you ask? Because I'm down to my last dozen bags of Barry's tea. Breakfast tea, as any Irish (or British) person will tell you, is simply not up to par on 'the continent'. The watery taste of European notions of breakfast tea is reminiscent of a million summer holidays in France, sitting outside a mobile home and eating paprika flavoured crisps, slathered in factor 30.

I'm worried, because there's nothing quite like the taste of home. I've forfeited so many other things; cheese and onion Taytos, cheddar cheese, Irish sausages and pudding, and soda bread, that tea was all I had left. And now it's almost gone. I jest, of course, I can buy Yorkshire tea at the 'international' section of a supermarket up the road. But Yorkshire is Yorkshire, and while I love it dearly it is not home. So I have turned to the internet, which has never failed me before, to see how I can remedy the situation.

And you know what? I buy everything else online-sunblock, books, furniture, why not up my game and start getting my teabags online too? The idea of a 500 tea bag-box of Lyons nearly made me light headed with anticipation. I did some fast maths, and if I drink 2 cups a day, every day, this box will last me approximately 8.3 months, and cost a mere 0.0.4 cent per cup. That is just so good, I'm practically making money!

And why stop there? The cheeky devils on this website are also doing a St.Patrick's Day (or any time of the year Day) hamper with all sorts of treats including Emeralds sweets (fond memories from childhood) Bewley's tea, and some Lily O'Brien's chocolates. Sounds absolutely delightful, and I'm going to heavily drop some hints about how much I would love such a gift, which might involve me printing out the picture and sticking it up in several places.

All this talk of Irish food is making my mouth water. Denmark is great an all, but there's some things you can't change, and my love of Irish food is one of them. Some days in the supermarket I want to pull my hair out, because skinke ost (processed cream cheese with bacon) is not Irish cheddar and Danish bacon tastes like the sadness of a million penicillin-fed pigs. Sure, you can get imported Irish cheese, but it'll cost you a sweet fortune and you won't want to eat any because then it will be gone.

So for now I'm going to resign myself to having another cup of tea from my dwindling stock, maybe making this delicious looking soda bread from the wonderful Girl Called Jack, and do a cost-benefit analysis of purchasing as many Irish food items I can buy over the internet. It's a good day when you can honestly say that running out of tea bags is as bad as it gets.