More food adventures. I seem to talk about food a lot. Since being here I've been in a state of constant hunger. Which isn't unusual for me but its never happened this often. I wake up in the middle of the night and munch on a baguette. I crave charcuterie, which is various kinds of ham, prosciutto and salami, every single day. At any given time we have no less than 3 different kinds of cheese in our refrigerator. If there's any country for a foodie like me, France is it.
Wednesday the school hosted a wine, cheese, and charcuterie tasting. I'm not a fan of wine, I went mainly for the cheese and charcuterie. Ever since I moved here I can't get enough of the stuff. But I ended up actually liking the wine, too. It was a diverse group, only 10 people, but representing Canada, Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Iraq and Italy. I like meeting all these people of different cultures.
Speaking of different cultures, our teacher informed us that Thursday there was going to be a party for all the international students at the University. Everyone had to bring a traditional dish from their country. After saying this she looked at the 2 Americans in the class and said "USA, what do you have?" We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.
I wracked my brain all week, everything American I thought of (fried chicken, BBQ, buffalo wings, ribs) was not possible to make. Either it doesn't exist here or I didn't have the capacity to make it at my apartment, or the money. Then I had the genius idea to make PB&J: easy, cheap and very American. I've heard from 2 french people that its the weirdest thing they've ever heard of. Stores here only just recently started selling peanut butter and if you search hard enough you can find it.
Well, Thursday comes and I proudly bring in my plate of PB&J cut into triangles only to find out that 2 other Americans had the exact same idea! It only then dawned on me that I could have made Mac N Cheese and then I could have stood out from the crowd. My teacher said that every year, it never fails, there's always at least 1 plate of PB&J at the party.
There was a lot of good food there. Lots of Chinese, various South American dishes, some Middle Eastern stuff. My favorite was something from Romania, which had ground meat, sauerkraut, rice, and cheese. I went back for seconds on that one. I need to find this Romanian person and get the recipe.
Speaking of American (ish) food in the France, when asked if there's any food he misses from the US, Adam says Mexican and spicy foods. There's a quesadilla place down the street but its more like crepes with stuff inside that's not exactly Mexican.
We had a sweet salsa-ish type thing at a French friends house once and asked what it was and he said it was Old El Paso salsa. Adam and I busted out laughing and the french people looked at us confused. We said it was nothing like actual Mexican salsa. It was still good though, so I went to buy some at the store, Adam and I like spicy, but the French seem to have an even wimpier taste than most Americans. The only salsa options were Mild and Extra Mild.
We were taking a walk one night and passed a store with nothing but foods from the US, Canada, and the UK. They had British teas and cookies and beers, Canadian maple syrup. For the US they had BBQ sauce, hot sauce, Lucky Charms, frozen onion rings, mozzarella sticks, mountain dew, root beer, campbell's soup, twizzlers and skittles, aunt jemima pancake mix, corn bread mix. It was pretty awesome. I left with a can of A&W rootbeer and some cream of mushroom soup to use in a recipe. I almost bought a box of Lucky Charms until I saw that it cost over 9 euros!
Besides all the cheese, the French are pretty healthy (oh and minus the smoking, that stereotype is very true. I HATE cigarette smoke. But you can't avoid it. Everyone smokes. All the time. Everywhere. Even if they only have 20 seconds to spare they'll light up and take just one puff. They roll up their homemade cigarette on the tram and have it in their mouth waiting, impatient to smoke it, then the moment they step off the tram they light up. As if waiting 5 seconds to step off to the side is too much). Anyways, I digress... And Grenoble is like Denver, next door to the mountains so everyone is really active. I love it. In 5 weeks I can count the number of overweight people I've seen on 1 hand. But an interesting thing I noticed on the food ads hung at bus/tram stops. At the bottom of every food ad it says one of 2 things: "for your health, avoid eating too much salt, fat and sugar" or "for your health, participate in physical activity regularly" ...random thought but just something i found interessante.
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