Almost everybody has heard about the rise of obesity in the US, how American people love fast food, fried food, colas, and sweet stuff…
Well… it is kind of true; you will find way more fast food joints here than in France for example, and quite a few haven’t made it there (yet). Of course, we do have McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC. But there are a lot of fast food places that I discovered when I moved here, and some of them are actually quite OK. Of course it never replaces a homemade-with-love meal, but when you are desperate for food, there are some good options out there.

Let me be clear, I am not a fast food person.

First I was simply not brought up that way. My mom was cooking every day, except for those few years when she was too sick to do much. My dad still cooks most of his meals, only relying once in a while on an already prepared dinner. The number of times he has actually been in a fast food place can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand 🙂

And even now that I am bombarded with options, I cannot say that I have developed a taste for fast food, although I do recognize that it can come handy sometimes.
Even when I was working a full time corporate job back in France, I would rather have a good “jambon-beurre” (sandwich made with fresh baguette, butter and ham) bought from a bakery than stop at a McD. And later in my career my company moved to a business campus where there was a very good on-site restaurant.
So while I sometimes have a burger now and then, it is mostly during the week-end when I don’t feel like cooking. We do also enjoy the occasional Chinese take-out but that’s about once every 2 months or so.

The rest of the time?

I cook homemade meals…
So maybe for a lot of you out there, that is a given. But trust me, when you come from France to the USA, a lot of things change and you need to adapt to a new food and cuisine environment.

Like discovering new products in supermarkets.

Of course, there are some products that are similar: for example, you can find Oreo cookies in France too 🙂
But a lot of brands are different and you have to learn what brands you like all over again.

The lack of well-stocked markets and specialty stores

Another difference: I used to go once a week to the market. And that market featured about 50 different vendors, from bakers to butchers, florists, shoes vendors, fish stalls, etc.
A very different experience than going to the supermarket obviously, because you get to know your favorite vendors, where their merchandise comes from, etc.
Now we do have a Farmer’s market here, but I have to say it looks pretty desolate in comparison…
I think it might be because French people are more used than American people to buying in small specialty stores and markets.
I was a bit bummed when I discovered that there is no real bakery around, and no butcher shop (now I do understand that I live in the neck of the woods 😉 and that if you live in NYC or LA your experience might be entirely different).
As a result, I do most of my grocery shopping in supermarkets, like Food Lion and Kroger (Kroger being a bit more upper end than Food Lion but more expensive too usually).
And although I can find some decent beef, chicken and pork at Kroger, and even some French wine, I still miss the market and the French bakeries and butcher shops.

A quick side note on bread, pastries and cakes

I need to digress a bit here to talk about bread, pastries and cakes.
It is pretty difficult even in France to find a good baguette. Not all baguettes are created equal 🙂
I was blessed to have a very good local bakery where I was living. Their baguette was really good and their croissants awesome. But their cakes and pies, not so much.
That’s because a good baker is not necessarily a good pastry chef. And vice-versa.
But here it’s been a struggle to find a good baguette. I did find a couple in Kroger and Earth Fare, but they are either not crispy or taste and smell very strongly of yeast.
I have to admit that I did find a very nice butter croissant at Earth Fare. So all hope is not lost obviously!
I also have a hard time with American cakes, mostly because I am not a buttercream or frosting person, and a lot of cakes here are covered in the stuff. I much prefer a good banana or pumpkin bread. Carrot cake too, but without the frosting on top! I also have trouble with cupcakes because they are so often too sweet for me.

Apart from my failure in finding good bread, I also face the lack of certain proteins.

Beef, chicken, pork…

Main proteins available here are chicken, turkey, beef and pork. You can find some lamb but not everywhere and it’s quite expensive. Veal is even harder to come by although I did find some at my local Kroger.
And forget about rabbit, duck or guinea fowl. As somebody once told me, if you want a rabbit you have to go hunt and kill it yourself (which I am most definitely not ready to do…).
I am not even touching on frog legs or snails, although I hear that I could find that down in Louisiana (probably their French heritage ;-)).
This lack of variety in the protein department (I am not talking about fish or sea food because hubby doesn’t like much of those) means I needed way more recipes on the ones that are readily available here.
So I bought a few cooking magazines and looked up on the Internet to find new ways to prepare chicken, beef and pork (not too fond of turkey personally, I mainly cook it for Thanksgiving).

Discovering new ways of cooking

Being here also meant discovering new ways of cooking, and by that I mainly mean the magical “Instant Pot”. Now that is a nice appliance!
For those of you who are not familiar with what an “Instant Pot” is, it’s an electrical device that looks like a pressure cooker, but allows you to do a number of things: sauté, slow cook, pressure cook, cook rice, bake cakes, make yogurt, etc.
All in one!
I haven’t tried the yogurt setting yet, but I am thinking about it!
Of course you can argue that you can have a slow cooker, a Dutch oven, a pressure cooker, a yogurt maker but my kitchen is small and doesn’t allow for a lot of storage space. So the Instant Pot is actually quite a game changer here.

One more hurdle

Another huge adaptation I had to make when I moved here was adapting to a new measure standard.
Yep, let’s not forget, France (and most countries actually ;-)) uses a different system, with liters and grams, while America uses cups, measuring spoons, pounds and ounces…
And of course the temperatures for your oven (and otherwise) are in Fahrenheit and not Celsius…
Fortunately I bought a scale that allows me to weigh in grams or in pounds/ounces.
Plus my liquid measuring cup does both liters and cups.
And I found a handy conversion list that is stacked to the fridge!
Anyway as in anything there was a bit of a learning curve but I am getting better at it!

So here is my experience of getting into American food and cuisine, do you have any of your own? Let me know in the Comments section.