Just a little gripe

So you want to know one of the annoying little things about living here in Ireland? And just so you know, this is about food as usual. Well, it is a very strange thing to notice, but the bread here is just crazy. It's not like bread back home. Buying it, I mean. So for us kiwis buying bread means going to the supermarket and seeing loads of those plastic racks full of nice soft loafs of bread, with sandwhich and toast and extra thick slices, and they are in bread bags. Which you can open and close easily. But here, it is different. First of all the bread is not in a bag, hardly ever. It is in waxed paper, and once you open it you cannot conveniently close it again. Which sounds like such a small thing but it is not, because sometimes the package rips completely and then you're screwed. And because it is not a bag there is nothing to hold on to if you don't have a shopping bag, so you hold it under your arm and try not to squish it - but it always gets squished. On the upside, you can get a half a loaf, which is good when you don't eat a lot of bread. But on the downside, it is more necessary, because if you leave the bread in the cupboard where bread belongs here it will go stale really quickly. And finally, it is almost all white or brown. Where are all the wholegrains? And that is not actually finally, there is more. It doesn't come in different sizes. You might find a doorstep loaf but other than that all the same thickness. Which is more like toast bread so that is good. But what if you want sandwhich bread? What if I want to introduce the Irish to cheese-rolls? Which I am going to do in the near future I hope. Plus a lot of the bread is a strange shape, and the slices are too long for the toaster. And then there is all this soda-bread, which is not really bread at all because it has no yeast, it is more like what I would call a loaf. It is sort of cake like. It is sometimes quite good - but it is not really bread like for sandwhiches. Maybe for dipping in soup. But that's really all. Things here are so weird sometimes.

Here's a picture to lighten the mood.

Strike that. Make it plural. Pictures.