A few months back we had an international dinner, where everybody in our house was supposed to make some dish from their home country. My friend Renee, from North Carolina, and I thought really hard about what "real" American food was. We settled on the idea of making meat loaf and homemade macaroni and cheese. She also made an apple pie for another similar occasion. While these are definitely things that people eat, we decided, for this particular dinner, to make some authentic food that people eat at home on a regular basis.
The first step to our gourmet trio was good old fashion PB & J. Of course, we had to call it by its long name "Peanut Butter and Jelly" to our friends, because they didn't understand the initials. Then we had to explain that all there was to it was in in the name. Believe it or not, it didn't win over a lot of people. Many of the people we know from Europe aren't big fans of peanut butter, and we knew that going in. To be fair, looking at the table full of delicious dishes, who could blame the people who skipped over the triangle cut sandwiches on plain white bread? We could have gone fancier, but we wanted to preserve the integrity of the original PB & J: plain bread, peanut butter, and strawberry jelly. I can't honestly say that I like PB & J, but I know it's nearly unanimously approved of at home. However, many of the people who did try it last night didn't really like it. They said that the taste of peanut butter was "just too much" and "too sweet." Mind you, this is coming from the land of Nutella and some of the people who put chocolate bars on their bread for breakfast. One girl said that it was ok for a bite, but that was enough to last her the rest of her life. So far we weren't really selling the American culinary experience.
Our next masterpiece used the same quality bread and was the amazing grilled cheese sandwich. We did have to make a minor concession here because we didn't have access to the rubber patties in the cellophane wrapping known and loved as "American Cheese." We were also unable to find cheddar cheese, so, of course, we ended up with a mild Gouda. While frying up these morsels of cheesy goodness, the guy cooking some elaborate pasta dish on the stove across from us looked up and asked why we weren't doing the international dinner. Apparently he didn't think our sandwiches looked like acceptable dishes to pass. At the very least, he thought we needed some meat on the sandwiches. Don't these people understand we were maintaining the integrity of the original creations?!? Well, the joke was on him because the grilled cheeses were actually a big hit.
Finally came my personal favorite, macaroni and cheese. We weren't going to do it from scratch this time. We wanted people to understand what the typical mac and cheese of choice is. We found two boxes of mac and cheese in the international section at the grocery store. There's a small American section that houses some off-brand US products like box brownies, frosting, microwave popcorn, and mac and cheese. The looks we got when we poured out the pasta and added in bright orange powder were great. After two simple steps of dumping in milk and butter, we were all set. It didn't honestly taste the exact same as the stuff at home, but people got the gist. There were mixed reactions on this one. Again, though, to be fair, it was sitting right next to a homemade pizza made by an Italian and a homemade lemon meringue pie. I guess it's all relative.
While it may seem like we took the easy way out, this trio was a calculated decision made by the two of us to share some everyday food that we've grown up with with our friends. They may not have loved it all, but they did enjoy trying some of the food they associate with American movies.
