Care package love, or shameless product placement

There are a lot of little things I miss here in Switzerland, stupid little things like Grape Nuts and Triscuits and Annie's Shells and Cheddar. Peanut Butter Cups. Vita brand herring packed in sour cream with onions. Oh how I miss Vita brand herring packed in sour cream with onions. But I've never gone to great lengths - hardly gone to any lengths - to keep these silly little loves in my life. I decided when I moved here that I was moving here - it's hard enough living with one foot on each shore without making it worse by refusing to accept the fact that I live in Switzerland and things are just different here. If I can't adapt to these little things - Grape Nuts, this is really not a big deal, they're Grape Nuts - what chance do I stand? Adapt and overcome, as my father the former Marine would say.

There are four exceptions, things that are either impossible to get here or just too difficult and then expensive on top of that, that I refuse to live without, and whenever R. and/or I travel to the States we fill up our suitcases with:

1. Cream of Tartar. No Cream of Tartar, no Snickerdoodles.
2. Domino's Light Brown Sugar.
3. Fleischman's Yeast packages. Not because there is no yeast in Switzerland, of course there is yeast in Switzerland, but the packages are different sizes and we have a lot of American recipe books that call for "a package of yeast."
4. Nestle Choocolate Chips. Why yes, Nestle is a gigando Swiss company and yes, yes I do live in Switzerland, and yet they are not available here, so we truck them in by the suitcase full. Rather like carting coal to Newcastle, but what are you going to do?

Other than that, if I can't find it here I don't need it. No Macaroni and Cheese? Good grief, Alpenmacaroni is better anyway. No Grape Nuts? Try the Museli. No Peanut Butter Cups? I live in Switzerland, the Valhalla of chocolate, do I really need Peanut Butter Cups? No, no desperate longing for the random foods of home for me (except, perhaps, my one true love The Dysfunctional Family Sundae; scroll about half way down the menu).

Then for Christmas by brother and sister-in-law sent me a care package with lots of little foodie treats - Grape Nuts and Triscuits and Peanut Butter Cups and the like. I think it is the first care package I have gotten since I moved to Switzerland. I made it a point of pride to adapt, perhaps to the extent of face, cutting off nose to spite. So I got this care package for Christmas and I resisted opening the intruiging-sounding Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits until today.

That list of four things worth sticking in the suitcase? Make it five.