Foods I craved in France

When I was a student, I was fortunate enough to live in France for a couple years. It was a great education in many respects. Small surprise that it was where I began appreciating food more deeply. Not just kweezeen, but food and people's enjoyment of it.

I got to try all sorts of great stuff, harvest wine grapes, etc. but I could not deny that there were some foods from home that I missed and really could not find in France. Okay, you could probably find them in Paris, but I always consider that a place which is the epitome of France but not like the rest of it at all.

The short list of things a person could crave, even in the gastronomic cornucopia of France:

• Crackers, by which I mean plain old saltines, oyster crackers, Ritz crackers, and animal crackers
• Pecans - these were really hard to find; the common nuts were hazelnuts and walnuts
  
• Mexican food - France just doesn't have the critical mass of the right group of immigrants to ensure this
  
• Buffalo wings - the French caution about spicy things (oh, how they warned me about spicy ketchup, which was really mild by my standards) will probably keep this off the food scene for decades yet
  
• Hershey's chocolate - yes, I know Swiss and French and Belgian chocolate are lovely and silky, but sometimes I just craved a plain, waxy Hershey's bar
• M&Ms - Smarties are just not the same, although the color choices are better
  
• Peanut butter - You could find cans --cans-- of Dakatine, which featured a homely red-headed boy about to enjoy the product. But it was old-fashioned or natural peanut butter, which is a hard sell even to me. No wonder it never caught on. They never had Skippy or Jif or Peter Pan. On white bread. With grape jelly or marshmallow fluff. Or bananas. Or homemade peanut butter cookies.
  
• Popcorn - This was before microwave popcorn, so there wasn't even as much of it here in the US at that time. But when they did eat popcorn in France, they sprinkled sugar on it. Eww!
  
• Corn chips - At home in those days, we could choose between Doritos and Fritos. In France they had neither, as corn was just not a foodstuff for humans. Except for polenta, but that was Swiss.
  
• Diet Coke - In those days, diet soft drinks had not come to France yet. I did find Coke Light in Germany, though.
  

Lest I sound like a complete Philistine, I did not spend much time pining for these things. But the second time I went to live there, I sent ahead a box of treats for myself, which included Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Barnum's Animal Crackers. And on one shorter trip, I carefully packed and brought all the makings for a taco dinner for my friends. They may still be drinking glasses of cold water.

Foods I can pass up with no grief

I always feel a little funny about this, but here are some foods that send other people into raptures but don't do a thing for me. I don't out and out dislike them, and I won't refuse to eat them, but I don't think I'd care if I never had them again.

• coffee cake
• Danish pastries
• lasagna
• cheesecake
• sangria
• lemon bars
• meatloaf
• bread pudding
• macaroni and cheese
• martinis
• tamales
• falafel
• boston creme pie

What's on your list?

I'm tired... so tired *

I'm a little loath to admit this, especially with the likes of Eolai out there, but I detest filling bicycle tires.

I like to ride my bicycle, but every spring I delay later the day when I must fill the bicycle tires.

It doesn't help that our garage is beginning to look like the home for stray two-wheelers. I keep trying to fulfill my Jessica Fletcher fantasy and get a marvelous heavy old sheep dog of a bike (ladies' style, of course) to ride around town. To the train station, or to the farmers' market (same thing in our town). This means I have three sets of hungry tires to feed once the snow melts. One has gone lame (=needs new tires), but the other two are just fine.

We do have two very functional bicycle pumps. But one of them attaches in a funny way, and I always waste ages pumping away while a gentle hissing sound reminds me that none of this effort is actually putting air into the tires. My hands get bruised, my back gets sore, and I get maybe six pounds of pressure registering. (I do have a very nice tire gauge.)

So my preferred solution is to walk the bike to the nearest filling station (Does anyone still call them that? You know, a gas station.) and use the compressed air hose. I'm offended by the ones that expect me to put quarters in a machine to get air, so I seek out places that give away air for free. There's one about half a mile from the house. I trundle my lovely heavy bicycle over there, and that's when I'm forced to admit that I am also no good with a compressed air hose. I press down and, like a baby refusing to nurse, the tire just gets flatter and flatter as I fish for the nozzle sunk deep in the rim. Then I get into a rhythm: aha! it's latched on! here comes the air! whoops, no, now it's just releasing it all again, yes! got it now! no, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, wow that's fast, it'll be really firm, last all summer long... BANG!! Ears ringing, I look around , hoping no one's been watching me. I trudge home with my crippled paleolithic bike and wonder if I could just get solid tires like I had when I was a little kid.

* lyric reference from Blazing Saddles