Animal, Vegetable, Miracle_ A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver [79]
Of course that’s not the whole story. We have our New England clam chowder, Louisiana gumbo, southern collards and black-eyed peas, all regionally specific. But together they don’t add up to any amalgamated themes or national guidelines for enjoying what grows near us. The food cultures of other geographically diverse nations are not really one thing either; Italy is particularly famous for its many distinct regional specialties. But still that whole country manages to export a cuisine that is recognizably “Italian,” unified by some basic ingredients (i.e. pasta), and an intrinsic attitude. We recognize the origins of other countries’ meals when we see them, somehow sensing their spirit: Mama mia! Bon appétit. Pass the salsa.
If you ask a person from Italy, India, Mexico, Japan, or Sweden what food the United States has exported to them, they will all give the same answer, and it starts with a Mc. And it must be said, they’re swallowing it. Processed food consumption is on the rise worldwide, proportional to growing affluence. French metro stations are plastered with ads for convenience foods. On a recent trip there I queried audiences about the danger of France losing its traditional foodways, and found them evenly divided between “Never!” and “Definitely!” Working women my age and younger confessed to giving in to convenience, even though (as they put it) they knew better. They informed me that even the national culinary institute was going soft, having just announced that its chicken courses would no longer begin with “Feathers, Feet, and Viscera 101.” A flutter of conversation ran through the crowd over this point, a major recent controversy that had created radio call-in riots. I got an inkling that “giving in to convenience” means something different on that side of the pond. But still, these are real signs of change. Plenty of Parisians visit “MacDo” every day, even though it’s probably not the same customers going back every day. They’re in for the novelty, not the food value.
We are all, I suppose, dazzled by the idea of things other people will eat. There on the Montreal Chinatown sidewalk we stopped to admire what must have been twenty-five-pound fish chasing each other’s tails in slow motion in a half barrel of water. Lily and my young nieces inspected them closely, then looked up at me with eyebrows raised in the age-old question: dinner, or pets? I had no idea. We poked into shops that sold tea, dried mushrooms, and fabulous dresses that zip up the side so tightly they look painted on. We ate lunch in a bustling cafeteria where the goods ranged from fried squid to Jell-O.
Later we stopped in at a Lebanese market, which the kids also considered fine entertainment. They kept running up to show me intriguing edibles: powdered flowers in bottles; some kind of cola apparently made from beans; “Greek Mountain tea,” which looked to me like a bunch of weeds in a cellophane bag. An enormous glass case ran the full width of the store across the back, displaying cheeses. No modest yellow blocks or wheels were these, but gigantic white tablets of cheese, with the shape and heft of something Moses might have carried down from the mountain. Serious cheesemaking happened here, evidently. A young woman in a white apron stood ready to saw off a bit of goat, cow, or sheep cheese for me. We chatted, and she confirmed that these products were made in a kitchen nearby. I was curious about what kind of rennet and cultures were used for these