Cultural...Similarities?

Until this week, I have never felt so fulfilled by eating cheese.

For awhile, when people asked me what I wanted from the US, I said 'peanut butter' because, while not impossible to find here, it can be difficult and it is invariably more expensive than at home, and often all you can find are jars of Skippy (filled with hydrogenated oils) or cans--cans--of the stuff. Peanut butter in a can must be undead. Or similarly horrible.

Peanut butter is one of the classic American foods here.

But recently I discovered that there is a food I love (I didn't even know this until I was absent from it) that one simply cannot find in Paris, save peut-être at British or American specialty stores. This godly nectar is known in English-speaking countries as "cheddar", and lately, I cannot get enough of it. I recently brought back from London an extra extra strong (No. 7) variant that was quite good...

I've watched Virginia crave and get a lot of satisfaction out of buying and devouring slabs of the strange soft or goopy, slightly malodorous cheeses that one finds here, and intellectually, I've understood that she grew up eating it, she likes it a lot, and sometimes she just wants it. (I've heard other people describe cheese as a 'bonheur'.) But now I think I have a real, experiential appreciation for the French love of cheese.

Good God, does it hit the spot!