Food for Traveller's Thought
As I stroll through the grocery store aisles of cheeses, wines and aperitifs at my local grocery store, I always feel a heightened sense of frustration. It seems that my consistent phrase of choice is: "Where the fuck is..." This week's emotional turmoil was a search for hot sauce that is actually "hot" and sesame oil. I often make myself go even more crazy by carrying false hope of finding rare luxuries like vegetarian nuggets, black beans or peanut butter flavoured anything.
I've always believed that by staying in a country that is not your own, you forfeit the right to complain about lacking items from your country. But, I also thought that I would become a French person whose dinner would consist of an appetizer cleaned off diligently by bread, a rich entrée, a dessert, some cheeses, a yogurt- oh and wine along the whole way. None of that happened- well, except the wine part.
Food carries a sense of home and familiarity. To me a burrito is a heavenly mix of love, guacamole (my official food group) and Mexican goodness, wrapped in a comforting tortilla blanket-- whatever mistakes I may make in life, a burrito will never be one. The smell of freshly cooked broth wafting through the house, with an overcooked carrot that I give to my dogs, is the beginning of a delicious soup or the end of a runny nose. Pierogi, the only Polish food anyone knows, are the definition of working for your food: flour fumes, sore fingers and an inability to move once you finish eating.
Thankfully I don't have to miss bagels. I found a tiny bagel café in Rouen that makes my Toronto foodie heart swell with joy! Gourmet bagels and Kinder Bueno cookies.
I have a right to be upset when I bite into what I think is a cherry pastry, but is actually a tomato-sausage roll. I have the right to be disappointed when I order a coffee with milk , but instead receive milk with coffee. As much as I might want to seamlessly adapt to my new surroundings, I cannot change the fact that I have always preferred drip coffee to espresso, or that to me pastry with some sort of design on top will be sweet not savoury. My likes and dislikes have been shaped by my home surroundings and they cannot be overridden by four months in a foreign country. When travelling, it's okay to be sad about not having your favourite things around you, and it's okay to miss your small home-luxuries.
I don't fault French people for having mediocre foreign cuisine-- to them that's not their home surrounding and not their life's needs. I also cannot be down on myself for sometimes wishing that I wasn't in France and instead was curled in my own bed surrouned by my animals. It doesn't make me a bad, uncultured traveller-- it just means I am lucky enough to have a feeling dear to me, that I call home.
Not all hope is lost for food because I'm still dreaming of these delicious vegan burgers from Warsaw. I can taste their crunchy freshness as I type this.