My first post!

I've been pondering what I should write my first post about. Should I write about how we got here? Let's see. Family of four (I'm including our choccie lab) leave the UK for Australia, travel around in a caravan for several months (what a stupid idea), decide to make Bellingen home then six months later move to a stuffy Sydney suburb in the Upper North Shore (another dumb move). We become family of five and relocate to the Central Coast.

So here we are. I like it here. By the beach. Plenty of space. Lovely walks. For the first time in almost two years, I'm thinking maybe this is it. We've come such a long way, but maybe I'll go into that another time. Right now, I want to get something else off my chest.

Stuff I miss back home. It's a long list, but a good one.

Outdoor-bred pork. Streaky bacon.

Image from here

Neal's Yard Dairy. Oh, I miss good cheese. A really good cheddar. Decent feta. Goat's cheeses. Wigmore. The lot.

My Riverford box. (I can cross this one off my list... now that I have my FIG box)

St John's sourdough bread.

Cave-aged cheeses. Gorgonzola, gruyere, manchego.

Proper sausages. Pork sausages.

Appleby's Cheshire. Did I mention cheese?

English asparagus. Picking raspberries and loganberries. Jersey Royals.

Goose fat that I can afford.

Spring greens.

Dulce de leche. Have been searching for two years now. I asked at the service desk of a large supermarket if they had any. Might be with the cheeses, I was told.

Weetabix. Yes, weet-AAA-bix. They're nicely oval, and not so brittle. I'm saving up for a packet in the international food section.

Sea bass and, until recently, Cornish mackerel. We've just found some beautiful mackerel that looks and tastes the same. Perfect for my mackeral teriyaki.

And Christmas when it's cold outside.

I miss so much more, but it's OK. It really is. There are plenty of things I love here. More on that another time. Meanwhile, if there's anyone out there reading this... what's on your list?