Peanut Butter

We do not live on peanut butter in the U.S. We knew we probably would not have a ready source for it here. There are plenty of delicious, very salted toasted peanuts here, and we eat them. Yet we were all bizarrely happy when Cricket found some recently after several weeks of trips to the same enormous hyper-marché.

Peanut butter is not, as one might think, in the Foods from Foreign Lands aisle, nor is it near the peanuts (which, by the way, are called cacahuetes normally, not arachide as seen on the label here. We have no idea why the change). At our local large-city-block-sized Auchan, peanut butter is located between the Nutella and the honey. Above it one finds something mysterious for which the English translation on the can is "chestnut spread" (a lot more sugary and a lot less interesting than it sounds). Nutella, by the way, occupies an entire supermarket shelf, top to bottom, along with various knock-offs, in varying jar sizes. This is A Good Thing. (But honestly, is it necessary to produce a 0,75 kg jar AND a 0,875 kg jar AND a 1,0 kg jar? And can't we all just agree on whether we're going to use commas or periods in the new global economy?)

For dinner on The Night Mommy Found Peanut Butter we set the table with knives, little plates, a baguette, and a bowl of carrot sticks. And we drew the curtains, just in case.

The jar of pâte d'arachide in the picture lasted -- not kidding -- less than 24 hours.

Mostly, though, the need for PB is really just a symptom of Cricket's gigantic learning curve in her new cooking environment. I am starting to know where to look for staples, and what some of the packages look like (eggs look like eggs, but are on the room-temperature shelf next to the sterilized milk in boxes, not in the refrigerated section), but the available items are really different. No canned beans to speak of, and no black beans at all. No rafts of chicken breasts. No tortillas. No sandwich bread except really scary squooshier-than-Wonder-bread stuff. No hearty dark greens like kale, or chard. No cream cheese nor cottage cheese (though in fairness, there are several other dairy products on the yogurt to sour cream spectrum that we do not have in the US). I do realize these are not everyone's staples, but they are my always-got-a-meal-somewhere foods to be found in the pantry, fridge, and freezer at home. We missed tortillas for a while, but have discovered the joy of the very readily available tart crust. Last week a small amount of leftover salmon plus some potimarron (a pumpkin-like squash I've not seen in the U.S.) I'd baked layered with onions and some butter and seasonings became a very happy quiche. This type of thing is now a common sight at dinner, and we will miss the tart crusts when we leave.

The bigger challenge, really, is that we're apartment-dwellers now. No American-sized fridge, no pantry, and no full-size freezer in the basement. Imagine a couple of dorm fridges stacked on top of each other; that's about what we have now. (We just learned, though, that we are going to get another fridge from the fantastic folks over at the Studium. Stay tuned!) As long as I plan ahead, the fact that Olivet closes on Sunday afternoon and Monday, and that the large stores and Orléans are closed on Sundays is just fine. I'm beginning to find a stride.