travel and the art of thanksgiving

jelloIn the Ville St. Paul, by the Seine and just next to an English bookstore, there is a place called the Thanksgiving Store. There, you can find a range of American and English food products, ranging from Jello to gumbo. I had heard about this shop, and, passing by it the other day, decided to step in and have a look. Initially, I wasn’t particularly motivated to check it out—Americana and the cult-like devotion to American junk food doesn’t really hold much appeal for me. So I was surprised by how excited, even thrilled, I felt upon entering the store. Its shelves were stacked with the familiar boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese, Swiss Miss, Kellogg’s and Betty Crocker.
Much like an American general store, the shop offered a range of items, including food, measuring cups, and cupcake tins. The food is mostly canned or in mixes: there were several different kinds of beans, including baked and black (both impossible to find in Paris), as well as gumbo, campbell’s, and even pumpkin pie filling. Fully half of the store seemed to be devoted to desserts, and there was even a cold case offering a variety of American sodas not available in Europe, such as Dr. Pepper and Mug Root Beer. I spent a while looking over the goods, but the prices kept me from going wild. Where most of these items would be sold for only a dollar or two, here they were easily twice or three times as expensive. I did, in the end, spring for a can of black beans, which came in two euro fifty, or over three dollars.
In the United States, these are all things that I see on a regular basis in grocery stores and delis, and in which I have little or no interest. I don’t really like Macaroni and Cheese, and I prefer to make my cakes from scratch. In this foreign setting, however, these products became novel and exciting. Suddenly, presented with an array of Betty Crocker mixes, I had the desire to try them all. My attitude towards them had altered; where at home, such a display represented simply a range of possible flavors, in this context, my desire became an exploratory one, and the actual taste of the food was secondary to its experiential value. I take a similar attitude towards the products typical to French culture. Where I might generally be disinclined to try something new, like snails (surprisingly good) or an unpleasant looking cheese, often my curiosity wins out, and I take the plunge, with mixed results but no harm done.