What I'll miss in the States

I'm less than halfway through my summer in Delaware and I'm already thinking about the things I'm going to miss when I return to Ireland. Certainly part of the rhythm of life for me here is a grocery store by the name of Trader Joe's. TJ's is a very modestly sized store (part of a chain) on Concorde Pike (R202). Compared with Giant and Acme it is a tiny foothill on the shopping landscape most people traverse at weekends, and yet it is amazing how many areas it covers. They have good shampoos, pretty fair cat food, all the fruit juices I ever need, fruit, veg., carbonated drinks of all sorts, meats, prepared meals, and so on. They have an unusally nice root beer (a drink that hardly exists at all in Ireland). It takes just a couple of minutes to walk around it, compared with SuperG nearby, which takes the better part of a week. The store is quirky, favours organic and unprocessed foods, and the prices of most things are below the monsters.

Frankly there's nothing in Ireland remotely like this. The supermarkets back home are pretty useless in terms of choice and price. Places favouring organic produce and so on tend to be up market and expensive. There are no really larger supermarkets with the range of value found in the UK and, much more, here in the US. I guess I'm just going to have to persuade TJ's to open in Ireland. Somehow I don't see it happening, alas.