Hannah Thornby in Website Form

Having lived in Europe for the last three months, I tend to perk up when I hear of the homeland.

Whether it is someone speaking in an American accent or mentions of the Etats-Unis, my attention is caught faster than a street crepe stand.

I suppose this is, in part, because I miss home and welcome familiar conversation. Yet it is also true that as fascinating as it is to study French culture, it is perhaps even more interesting to study how the French or Europeans study American culture.

Whenever I hear a European start to speak about America or Americans, I just want to know all they know and think. There are so many different things within our media and our politics that could inform their opinion. Did they watch Spielberg’s Lincoln, Tarentino’s Django, or the most recent American Pie? What does their image of Americans come from? The news? “The Simpsons?” Rumours of Walmart? The NFL?

It is a thoroughly strange and new experience for me to realize that I too have a culture that can be studied. I am not sure it is something I will ever get used to. In fact, I cannot imagine feeling anything but strange when I find others trying to comment on America. No matter what, I always tend to find what they choose to study or what they already know odd.

Here are some of the more peculiar examples of Americana I have come across in Europe.

You will find at Kebab shops and grocery stores something called sauce américaine. It seems to be a ketchup-mayo mixture. Your welcome France?

Especially after explaining that I am normally a student in Texas, many ask about guns. A Frenchman once asked me if every man in Texas owned a gun. A Scotsman who was about to go to Texas also expressed how he had been wondering if he would get a chance to shoot a gun. I hope his visit went okay.

The best, and perhaps most disturbing, are American-themed restaurants like “The American Dream” fast-food shop I went to back in my first month here. All over their walls were posters of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, and a million other stars as well as the kitschy-est pictures one could imagine from New York and Times Square. The folding chairs bore “USA” embroidery and each dish on their menu was named after a place in the United States for no apparent reason. And no one spoke English. I regret the meal but the decoration was a priceless experience. I would very much like to have explained to me what exactly it is that draws Frenchmen into such a restaurant.

There is also the sheer popularity of shows like “How I Met Your Mother,” “The Simpsons,” “American Dad,” and “Laguna Beach” (AKA “The O.C.”) which make me wonder as to what generalizations are made about America especially if that is their main source of information. We are not all Barney’s or Marissa’s and for better or worse, my high school experience was not at all like “Friday Night Lights.”

I have started to think a lot about how every American has a different America and the idea of a pure American culture – or any culture for that matter – is absurd. So, I am trying to be a little bit more careful when I find myself trying to characterize the French, recognizing how I cringe when upon hearing that I am American, people ask me about certain things.

I met my French fairy godparents, Anne-Sophie and Emmanuel, through an English Language Library in Angers where their children go to practice their English. They have welcomed me into their home a number of times before and invited me over to stay with them for this last Easter weekend. I feel very lucky to have met each and every one of them.

Marie-Claude, the grandma of the family seemed to take a liking to me as soon as she found out my gift as a guest was a bag of Benoit chocolats, which she argues are some of the best in France. She spent the entire weekend slipping me more chocolate and filling my glass with champagne. No one else in her family seems to like champagne and so she employed me to help her finish the bottle each time she opened one. She really likes champagne. There were many.

Though I struggled to understand all his French and he spoke no English, Patrice, the grandpa, still spent quite a bit of time telling me about the cheese industry which he worked in for over 20 years. He had lots to say about what to feed a cow so as to get the best milk, which should of course be unpasteurized for a better cheese. Patrice also expressed much concerned over Camembert, a brie-like cheese traditionally from Normandy that is apparently straying away from its AOC origins.

Emmanuel, the father, loves jazz and played it throughout the weekend as the designated family DJ. He and I bonded over our love of the television show Mad Men (I cannot even begin to describe how bizarre it is to see Don Draper in French) and San Francisco where he spent a summer when he was young. I probably spent the most time talking to him.

His wife, Anne-Sophie was also incredibly nice and was constantly asking if I needed anything. Her younger brother, Francois-Pierre, was the archetypal uncle and was always teasing everyone.

Saskia, their thirteen year-old daughter listens to Wiz Khalifa, Lana Del Ray, and Macklemore. She adores Nike, but she pronounces it “neek.”

The youngest members of the family, Candice age two and Emma age 5, I interacted primarily only with different silly faces. Their mumbling French was incredibly hard for me to understand, but that does not mean we did not share quite a few giggles.

Because they were at home and within their family, often everyone spoke incredibly quickly. Often, all I could do was sit and wait for the next word or phrase I could understand. And often even when I could understand what was being argued (every kind of food industry as far as I can tell as well as some political issues like the state of France’s healthcare and education system), I did not always have the vocabulary in French to participate in the discussion. So sometimes I felt like a lame duck. Yet everyone was always kind and welcomed me to participate in every activity, from sunday mass at the cathedral and the hunt for chocolate eggs left by the “Easter Bell” in the yard, to the marathons of eating they call “meals.”

Let me explain.

Each of the five big meals I shared with them this weekend involved a number of courses.

First, there is the aperitif, which is small snacks like crackers and nuts and more importantly drinks (alcohol) to set the mood for eating.

Then, there are the more formal starters. This weekend these included seafood like salmon rilettes, crab with mayonnaise, and oysters, as well as taboule and pâté. Besides the cheese round perhaps, the baguette basket is the most dominant here although it is present for every part of the meal.

I could easily have been satisfied after the starters, but that would mean I would miss out on the main course. When it comes to food I may never have tried before, my curiosity is definitely bigger than my stomach. Main course dishes included langoustine (which I learned after I ate them were basically tiny lobsters), escargot, crab, roast beef, mushrooms, bread balls????, green beans, and probably a couple other things I do not remember but ate. Easter Sunday lunch was the traditional lamb served with flageolets, a type of pale-colored bean, as well as french fries, endives made to taste like caramelized onions, and mushrooms.

Over the course of all the courses, on the table there was also a sauce made from special mushrooms called morels that I would not mind keeping in a flask with me at all times and having with me at every meal. For the seafood there was also always mayonnaise and for the meat, dijon mustard, as well as some type of sauce I think that was made from the extra juice from the lamb.

There were also a number of tarts and cakes, but I really only had eyes for the cache of chocolates that was inevitably brought out after every meal.

I was thousands of miles away from my home and my actual mother and father and brothers in Portland, but this last weekend reminded me of all my favorite memories of weekends, where both food and family are king.

I don’t always eat in caves, but when I do, I like to make sure it is in the Loire Valley. Because as disturbing as it is to walk over 60 seconds straight into the earth, the feast that lays within is worth it.

The Loire Valley has a number of restaurants in caves because of the “Troglodytes” or people who used to use their environment to its fullest potential by making their homes out of digging into the slopes and rock faces of the landscape. As recent as the 1930s’ people and animals would live together in communities in these natural dwellings for a number of reasons. The first from what I have gleamed is that the caves provided protection from the elements and a comfortable, consistent temperature no matter the season (although I found them to be quite cold).

Today the caves house wine cellars, cultivate mushrooms, and host special restaurants like the one I went to in la Cave Aux Moins.

Firstly, before coming to this restaurant, I had heard that it was a mushroom wonderland. At the risk of being too keen on fungi, I dare say it was. This was my first experience with a restaurant that valued mushrooms the way I think they should be valued. For while mushrooms are quite the supporting player to any dish, really good mushrooms like Champignon de Paris (curiously not from Paris), pleurote, pied bleu and the shi-také mushrooms homegrown in Cave Aux Moins deserve all the glory. Our first course included a galipette, which is a large mushroom stuffed with rilettes and a oyster mushroom served with garlic cream. Both were hearty and delicious like I believe every mushroom can be.

The next thing to come out was the fouace, or “special hot bread” as it was constantly translated into English. It was almost as much of a pleasure to watch the bakers shove the fouace in and out of the furnace from our table as it was to take one, fresh and warm, from the basket the waiters would carry around to each table every few minutes. And there is nothing that comes close to eating that warm pillow of bread or cutting it open and filling it like a pita with salted butter, mogettes (white beans), rilettes, or mushrooms. Always curious, I tried everything but as you could imagine, I spent most of my time loading my fouace with mushrooms.

Naturally, local wines were also served throughout dinner and before dessert and coffee there was also cheese – brie melted onto more of that special fouace.

All I will say is that when I finally emerged from the cave, leaving the aromas and the warmth of the age-old fire oven behind, I felt the need to explain to my French companion the meaning of “food coma.”