One of my favorite things about traveling to different countries is always the food, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about some of what I've found here. First, an unexpected find at the grocery store today: a lollipop!
Well, it wasn't the lollipop itself that was the surprise - it was the brand. As you can see from the picture there, that is a Halls brand lollipop. The same Halls that we associate with those (gross) menthol cough drops in the U.S. is a candy maker here. I have not yet tried the lollipop, but based on the package it does not appear to contain any menthol.
This is something I've seen more than once, though. Often companies that sell one product in one market sell a different product in another market. It's usually something related - for instance, it makes a lot of sense that a cough drop maker would sell candy, since cough drops are really just medicated candy. I know I've seen at least one other instance of product variation since I got here, but I can't think what it is just now - if it comes to me, I'll let you know.
There are other, equally unexpected kinds of product variations though, that have to do with eating habits and taste preferences. For instance, Yoplait sells its yogurt here as well - but in addition to the normal, say, peach yogurt you can buy at home, the company also sells a yogurt with cereal grains and nuts mixed in. At home, those add-ins are generally sold separately; here, it's already all mixed together. It's not bad, but for someone who's not used to it, it's a bit odd having a spoonful of yogurt and biting a walnut.
One of the most exciting things to me about being here is the fruit. There's an enormous variety of fruit here. Some of it is what we have at home - apples, bananas, and interestingly strawberries imported from California. Others are more exotic but still somewhat familiar, and still others are things I've never heard of before. I'm working my way through those latter two categories, starting with a fruit that I've had before but still falls into the 'exotic' category: the lychee.
In the first few days I was here, I saw a man selling rambutan - a close, more hirsute cousin of the lychee - from a wheelbarrow on the side of one of the main roads. This surprised me, because I usually think of lychees and rambutan as a very Asian fruit. It turns out there's a reason for this, though. Remember back to high school history, when we all learned that Christopher Columbus found the New World because he was looking for a better trade route? Well, you're looking at the fruits (literally) of that trade route. Mexico became a fairly common trading point for goods from the Philippines, and Filipino fruits - notably lychee, rambutan, and the mango - flourished in Mexico's heat and humidity. So these fruits originally of very foreign origin have ended becoming a fairly significant domestic product.
This is a half-peeled lychee. The red skin on the outside is very rough, almost pebbly, and fairly thick. Inside is a fruit with the consistency of a peeled grape, although with a large stone in the middle. They taste vaguely grape-like as well, although somewhat sweeter. Since I'm hesitant to eat grapes here - I'm still not entirely certain whether I can eat unpeeled fruit without getting sick - the lychees and rambutan have been a nice semi-substitute for me. They take a lot more work though - I have to rinse them, then get through the tough shell and peel them - and I'm impatient, so I haven't had more than a few at a sitting. When I am willing to put the work in, however, it's a nice treat!
No comments:
Post a Comment