Paris Journal: A Store Called Thanksgiving

Fine chocolate can be had here, cheaply, at local supermarkets. But yesterday, I took a twenty-minute train ride to buy an expensive bag of candy corn.

Actually, it was a quest for pumpkin pie that sent me to an American-foods store in the Marais called Thanksgiving. I bought two cans of Libby’s pumpkin puree, mixed it with sugar and spice, and put it in the oven in a French fluted pan, the wrong shape and size. My humble pie came out looking like a toddler dressed in her mother’s fancy clothes.

As the New York Times editorial put it this morning, today is a time to “dust off the Norman Rockwell part of your heart” if you’re an American abroad. Like Halloween, it’s a day that makes you lonely for home. It’s a holiday for huddling together, sharing recipes for our strange foods. My husband remembers living as an American in Holland as a child, when people asked, incredulously, “A tart made with squash? And sugar?”

When I walked into the tiny store, brimming with shelves full of homey, often processed foods, disguised as exotic specialty items, I was embarrassed for my country. Marshmallow fluff? Stovetop stuffing? This is what we want the world to think of American cooking? I want them to see the locavore, organic culture of seasonal, fresh foods, where we pick from our gardens and shop at farmer’s markets. I want them to see the mediterrean diet that I cook in Charlottesville, full of greens and grains and ethnic cuisines.

But today I’ll give thanks for a little store that stocks candy corn. Why? Because I have a homesick little girl who missed Halloween. Because I wasn’t buying food as much as memory. Yes, it’s possible to be nostalgic, for things comfortable and familiar, even (or especially) if you’re only nine.