"Since bread is square. Why is sandwich meat round?"

The same reason there are 10 hot dogs but only 8 buns in a pack! To drive us nuts! LOL!

ROFL!

Is this the Roux who taught us how to make roux by blending melted butter and flour?

No. Albert Roux is a French restaurateur working in Britain.
He and his younger brother Michel opened Le Gavroche, Britain's first Michelin-starred restaurant, in London.

And no, you don't need a French passport to love the culinary arts, but it certainly helps to be from a place that loves good food as much as they do.

The part of France in which we lived had a fetish for foods prepared in aspic. They'd be artistically created and stuck in shop windows for passersby to gawk. I dunno about you, but having a fish floating in mid-air in jelly staring out a window never really floated my boats. LOL.

I was in seventh heaven with the wines/cheeses/condiments and oh my God, the breads! But, I've also eaten more than a few really nasty meals there with unidentifiable protein sources. rofl. There are good and bad foods in every country and a really good food, I think, transcends needing an acquired taste.

When I get company from out of the country, I like to fix them traditionally American foods to get their take on it. I have found pumpkin pie took a little while but was eventually accepted. Fried mush, thumbs down.......meat loaf thumbs up. I had to tell one that it was the American version of ......well, I cannot spell it out or I presume if we still have a 'bad word' filter, I'd be in trouble.

Well, don't call it "fried mush" - call it "polenta" that gives it more class LOL

LOLOL Lilo, That never even occurred to me.

LOL Suzy! Reminds me of when friends from the UK were visiting here two years ago. They loved the barbecue here but when we took them to our favorite Tex-Mex place they were positively horrified by the refried beans.

You know, I don't know why, either. My kids had many a meal of beans on toast. Sort of the Brit version of a TV dinner. What really made me grin, however, is when one would go out to eat, there would often be on menues a dish with the word "American" as an adjective. Of course I'd order them on occasion to see just exactly what it is that Americans typically eat. One breakfast was eggs fried, beans and broiled tomatoes. Yes, of course I always serve tomatoes and beans for breakfast. I'd just forgotten.

And speaking of Tex-Mex, sometimes these cross-cultural experiences can become pretty scary. The last time we were in Paris DH wanted to go to a place called the Indiana Cafe in Saint Germaine. He had found it on the Internet & thought it had to prove that the French can be just as ignorant about geography as Americans, since the place serves (supposedly) Tex-Mex & is decorated with all sorts of ersatz Western art, photographs of Native Americans circa about 1870 in wigwam villages, etc. n(And yes we did ask and yes, the name Indiana does refer to the midwestern state.)

We did wander over there & it appears to be wildly popular with a mostly twenty-to-early-thirty-something crowd. I had an outrageously expensive margarita that was sweet enough to require an insulin shot as a chaser (and apparently they didn't know that triple sec is a needed drink ingredient) and what was purported to be a burrito, but you could have fooled me. And the prices!! 12.5 Euros for three tacos sans beans or rice! And to make the culinary dislocation complete there were also curries on the menu. LOL! DH figured that they thought Indians from America or Indians from India - it's all the same, right?

When I used to make my semi-annual trip to GB, I didn't pack clothing. Just assorted Mexican ingredients for DD's Tex-Mex. I borrowed my daughter's clothing when I got there or hit the charity shops and then donated it back when I left so I'd have another empty suitcase to cart home marmalades, Oxo, Coleman's, a bottle of scrumpy and decent curry pastes.

Speaking of which, the kids are in GB right now for a family wedding and I suspect they have hit every Tandori joint on their way south. We finally got an Indian restaurant here, and they were so excited, until they tried it. Then so disappointed when they did.

OMG! That reminds me of an Indian restaurant that was here when we first moved to Tyler. DH couldn't believe it so he said we had to try it one day for lunch. We walked in & there was a lunch buffet & it was loaded with beef dishes!! We thought what the ----? DH saw one of the food servers & started asking him where is this & that & the guy started to laugh & said, "Oh! You actually know about Indian food!" He then proceeded to give us some things he was cooking in the kitchen for his own lunch! He then explained that it was a recipe for bankruptcy to have an authentic Indian restaurant in East Texas, so beef had to be part of the menu.

We have found this same problem here with Italian restaurants (and lets not talk about chains like The Olive Garden that don't count). If a community doesn't have a sizable resident population of folks from a certain ethnic background, the resulting restaurants featuring that cuisine will be dubious at best.

I have found that to be the one benefit I can attribute to 'the non-documented workforce'. I can now get authentic Chorizo, decent maize tortillas, angel hair for fideo and my fav hot chocolate blocks. I used to have to have friends/relatives pipeline the stuff down to me, or make it myself. I still make my own flour tortillas. The best way I can describe the store bought ones are foam rubber pancakes.