Traveling
to a foreign country entails learning about the culture, and culture involves
food. What a feast for the senses!
Mexico: The best place to find food is in the market.
Sounds, sights and smells assault you at the entrance. You enter, dazed and
confused at what at first seems like a maze of stalls and people and “stuff.”
Take heart. The adventure awaits.
The
pineapple vendor selling thick, juicy, sweet slices for pennies apiece. I
bought one. Juice ran down my chin as I ate it. It was so good I had to have
another. And another.
The lady
selling blue corn tortillas. She patiently sorted through her stock to find
ones without any holes. If you have never eaten a blue corn tortilla, well, you
don’t know what you’re missing. They are so flavourful and aromatic, not at all
like the packaged tortillas you buy at the supermarket.
The fruit
vendor had piles of large green “things” I had never seen before. I asked my
friend, “Is that a squash?” “No, that’s a papaya!” (That was in 1987, before
such exotic fruit appeared in Saskatchewan supermarkets.) What a taste treat I
was in for. I think I ate half the papaya myself.
The mole
vendor (“mole” is a paste that you make into a sauce). Red, green and black
mole, ready to serve over chicken, enchiladas, fish, chilis rellenos, or
whatever else. Eat your heart out, ketchup.
Some
places, like the meat market, are not for the faint of heart. Sides of beef or
pork and freshly killed chickens with feathers, heads and feet still attached
hang in conditions that would give a Canadian food inspector a heart attack.
But you know that the meat you cook for supper was freshly killed that morning.
France: Just around the corner from our little hotel
was a little plaza with an open-air market. Fresh fruit and vegetables, good
cheeses, crunchy bread and bottles of unlabeled but extremely drinkable red
table wine, all relatively inexpensive. We often created our lunches from these
vendors.
We saw open-air
markets everywhere. Some operated every day, some only once a week. But
everything was fresh. Tomatoes smelled like tomatoes; peppers like peppers.
And the
bakeries. Oh my! The smell of freshly baked bread, the CRUNCH of a buttery
croissant that disintegrated into a thousand delectable crumbs, exquisitely
decorated petit-fours – how could one resist? Calories? Who’s counting?
Indonesia: An array of vegetables and fruits we had
never seen before. Alas, we spoke little Bahasa Indonesian; they spoke even
less English. We never did learn the names; that did not lessen their taste. Or
our enjoyment.
Ah, but
coffee! Powdered, not ground. Throw a handful or two thrown into a pot, pour
boiling water over. Let steep. Inhale the aroma. Drink. Hot, black and strong,
but never bitter. We have yet to find coffee that good anywhere else.
Newfoundland and Labrador: A food and cultural experience of
a different sort. We were traveling through Labrador with our truck and camper,
and arrived via overnight ferry at a small outport. We needed to restock our
fridge so we headed to the nearest grocery store. What a shock! There was
nothing fresh, only ancient vegetables and fruit – wizened apples, black and
shriveled cabbage, – and frozen meat encased in layers of frost. It brought to
mind the limited stocks we had grown up with in our small prairie town
groceries stores – one variety of apples (usually Macintosh), cabbage, head
lettuce (who knew it was called “Iceberg”?), onions, potatoes, maybe turnips
and parsnips, and four wan tomatoes in a cardboard sleeve with a cellophane
window. And we thought this was just fine because we knew nothing else!
How spoiled
we have become, with access to almost every variety of food in our grocery
stores, even if it wasn’t picked just yesterday.
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<HaddadGeneralStore.jpg>
My grandmother, Addie, wasn’t sure
what she would find the first time she went to Mr. Haddad’s store in Meyronne,
for everything had to be freighted in, a two-day wagon trip if coming from
Morse or three days from Moose Jaw. As you can imagine, there was little that
was fresh. Here’s what she saw (from Chapter 7 of “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” Tales from the Homestead):
“I knew better than to expect
shopping like in Toronto or even Dundalk; even so, my heart dropped when I saw
the Meyronne store. A false front wooden building with a sign on the front that
said, “General Store,” plopped out there in the bald prairie, no side-walk, no
street, not even a hitching rail for the horses, just trails leading off in all
directions.
We walked into the store and when my
eyes adjusted to the dimness, I was quite surprised at what I saw. Oatmeal,
flour, sugar, salt, tea, dried beans and peas, dry mustard, some canned goods –
I remember canned sardines particularly, – crackers, pails of lard, and some
dried apples, although they looked as if they had arrived last century. A
barrel of pickles and another barrel of salt pork sat in a corner. One shelf
held tin plates and cups, lamp chimneys and wicks, saucepans, frying pans and
matches. Underneath were pails, kegs of nails and bottles of kerosene. Behind
the counter, there were shelves of lye soap, liniment, Perry Davis Pain Killer
and Dr. Thomas Eclectic Oil.”
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