G’afternoon everyone. Getting right into today’s topic I’d like to talk about bagels. I bloody love bagels, those dense doughnut-shaped buns that form part of a balanced breakfast for millions of people everyday. Wonderful things. My basic breakfast consists of eggs, cheese, tabasco sauce and, of course, a bagel. But that’s really only since I moved to North America.

They’re not a huge thing in Australia. I mean, they’re around, you can definitely buy them. It wouldn’t be that hard to find a cafe that sells breakfast bagels filled with ham and cheese or other time-of-day appropriate fillings. But they’re not common like they are up here in Canada and the USA. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. I haven’t seen the kind of variety in Canadian breads that I’d expect in an Australian bakery or supermarket. Like I don’t see focaccia or pita or Lebanese bread (fuck I miss really good Lebanese bread). And you’re probably more likely to find crumpets or (ahem) ‘English’ muffins on an Aussie table. But we don’t have a lot of bagels back home. And bagels are awesome. I just ate one before coming here to write this. It was delicious.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that when I go home, eventually, in like a year or something, I’m gonna have to find a new source of bagels. They’ve been one of the best parts of moving to Canada, and I don’t think I’ll be able to give them up. Complain as I might about North American domestic beers and the lack of good Thai and Indian restaurants around, well, I can’t complain about their bread choices. Because bagels are amazing. Think I might go eat another in a moment.

So not so much an irritation today (though it might turn into that if I travel somewhere else and there aren’t any bagels), but that’s why we have the other part of the title. Tried to think of something Halloween related to talk about (I carved a pumpkin last night!) but couldn’t. So just think about how terrifying a world without bagels would be.

I fucking love bagels.