A very British craving...

My tastebuds and stomach have been craving British food and drink. This blog post is fueled by those cravings...

1) Tea

For the last couple of weeks, I've been craving a decent cup of tea. It shouldn't be hard, given that I'm in Canada, a country armed with grocery stores and a penchant for caffeinated beverages.

Except that Canadian tea is wrong. Now, I don't mean it's not drinkable. It brews, it contains caffeine, it even looks right. But the taste... it's just incorrect. I wouldn't describe myself as a tea snob - I'd as soon drink a cup of PGtips as Twinings, but the Orange Pekoe tea that lines Canadian shelves is lacking something that a proper British cup of tea really needs. I can't tell you what it is, but my tastebuds insist there's a difference and it won't sate that craving.

After a week of solid whining on a roadtrip round Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (sorry Helen), I stayed for a few days with an English friend. The sight of a box of Yorkshire Tea in the cupboard nearly brought me to tears, and when she told me the local store had a British section, stocking a diverse array of tea brands, I genuinely did a little dance.

So right next to my waterproof trousers and travel scrabble, there now lives a small box of english tea, ready for the moment that I just need a taste of home.

2) Cider

I've spent the last 7 years living in Bristol, and it's turned me into a cider addict. And a cider snob. When previously I'd not have seen anything wrong with pouring a bottle of Magners over a glass of ice, now I shudder at the prospect. Many a night spent on The Apple boat or sipping away at some Stowford Press or Westons Organic has given me a taste for the fine stuff, and once you've tried it, there's no going back.

When I came to Canada, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get cider of the same quality. What I didn't expect was that pretty much the only thing you can get in most liquor stores/bars is Strongbow. Yes, I know I'm a snob but I just can't bring myself to drink it. I've been promised that there is good cider in Canada, but it's mostly located on the west coast, so I'll have to wait til the end of the year to sate my alcoholic apple juice drinking ways. In the meantime, I'm cultivating a healthy like for beer...

3) Affordable cheese.

(I should point out that I'm currently in Quebec and therefore experiencing a temporary reprieve from this item, but it stays on the list due to it being an issue in every other province.)

I love cheese. My friends love cheese. There's rarely a social occasion involving food where someone doesn't rock out a block of brie or a chunk of cheddar. Weekends away have been planned around the substance, with a "bring a cheese" policy. In my social circle, it's serious business.

So imagine my horror when my first visit to a Canadian store showed prices in double figures for a slender slab of cheese. I estimate the cost to be 2-3 times the retail price in the UK, making it an unaffordable resource for the humble traveler to include in their daily budget. And I've found that most Canadians don't really buy much cheese as a result, or only a basic cheddar. It got to the point that mentioning camembert would probably have cause me to drool a little...

There's been a few lights in the dark though - I spent a week on a farm with goats, and reveled in their home made goat feta, and now aim to eat as much as I can during my three weeks in Quebec to satisfy this particular craving for as long as possible.

4) The British Banger

Ok, I admit it. I took the humble banger for granted. I genuinely assumed that such things were available worldwide, but now I see the error of my ways. In the average Canadian store, in between the frankfurters and spicy Italian sausages, you may stumble across something known simply as a 'breakfast sausage'. My first impression of this sausage wasn't good (it didn't look much like a sausage), and the taste test backed this up. First try = fail.

So the hunt continued. Eventually I found something resembling the banger in a small wholefood store in Halifax, and discovered that sausage making has become somewhat of an artisan activity in Canada. Those maple flavoured sausages found their destiny in a fusion of cultures, nestled amongst yorkshire pudding batter in a slightly Canadian themed toad in the hole. but who know's when I'll next get to eat bangers and mash...