My American Food Story
Can people pop like balloons? I don’t know and I didn’t want to know it on the way home from the cinema. ‘Medium popcorn and soda, please’. I was repeating it over and over in my head. Caramel one! It was definitely caramel popcorn; my favorite popcorn that sticks to your teeth and needs a lot of liquid to kill that unbearable sweetness. My first American movie experience was not what I expected!
I learned about America from the movies. In the family-friendly movies, they show those small houses perfectly located one next to the other, their huge backyards, friendly neighbors and everyone (absolutely every family) has a dog. Then there is the second category of movies about the big city life. It screams “youth and diversity”. They show huge buildings, a lot of traffic, diversity of the strangers you meet on the streets, and billboards screaming at you!
That’s America on your TV screens
American food is the only thing that I got to know once I was there. The first thing first, Americans love their food! Their cuisine is perfectly divided in between the national dishes and adopted (or improved) cuisine. As for me, it is a love-hate relationship with American food. I hate it after a month there and love it once I’m far away from the states. It is a very unhealthy relationship with very unhealthy foods that I eat there.
So, let me introduce my favorite American food choices. Clam chowder is heaven mixed with seafood. It is the most delicious and creamy soup that you can try. There is no wrong season or occasion for clam chowder. Breakfast sandwiches successfully get a second place on my list. The whole town usually smells like bacon and fresh toasts with butter in the morning. There is nothing better for me than a simple sandwich with fried egg, bacon, a slice of tomato, cheddar cheese, and honey mustard. Then there are sugar donuts. I didn’t know what happiness is until I tried a sugar donut straight out of the oven. They would simply melt in my mouth. They are more addictive than drugs and alcohol together.
American fast food is my secret lover
American fast food is my secret lover. I can always stay healthy but then I can get a slice of pepperoni pizza and forget all of my problems. Freshly made empanada and hot dogs from local Cumberland are the best dinner ideas after a long day at work. Fish and chips (French fries) or cheeseburger are my perfect company on the beach. There is a whole unhealthy world of sugary drinks and foods. Frozen drinks made by local coffee shops and all of the flavored soda that I could never try anywhere else. Don’t get me started about cupcakes or warm cinnamon rolls. I am ready to sell my soul for all of the baked goodies that America has.
Burgers are huge with a capital ‘H’
American food has only one catch — the size of their portions. What in other countries I would consider a large size for a cup of coffee would be small in the States. One slice of pizza is usually as big as my dinner back at home. Burgers are huge with a capital ‘H’. I used to cut them in smaller pieces as they simply could not fit in my mouth. I know it’s wrong and there were always people judging me but I had no choice. That’s what they didn’t show me in American movies. That is the true side of the struggle that I had to learn as a foreigner.
I never got to see the true sizes of American snacks until I went to the cinema. The first thing about their cinema is that I didn’t need to buy specific seats. I could occupy any seat unlike in other countries. My friends and I have to always plan before going to the cinema to ensure that we get the best seats and that we can all sit together. The second thing is that the price of the ticket is usually way less than the price for the snacks they sell. Considering the sizes of these snacks, I had to forget everything that I have learned about food portions so far. Cinema is a different American reality where everything doubles in their original sizes.
In summer 2016, my first summer in the states, I worked in Starbucks. I thought that I knew everything about food sizes until I went to the American cinema! I asked for medium soda and popcorn. Of course, I had no back thoughts even when the cashier asked me two more times if the medium was what I wanted. I said big and loud ‘YES’. You should have seen my face when he placed an enormous popcorn and a soda cup on the takeout station. His facial expression was screaming at me clearly ‘I told you’. That soda cup was the size of my face!
I have the face of the medium soda cup!
If you are wondering, I was able to finish that soda eventually. It was a hot summer evening so I truly appreciated my choice of drink. Popcorn was a bigger challenge. No one could help me to finish it; not even my friends who had the same order. I had to bring popcorn back to the house. On that day, my landlord became the happiest man alive when I gave him this huge bucket of popcorn that I had left. He loved it more than anything, especially free popcorn from the cinema. I was rather happy to see our bathroom not occupied after this amount of fluid that I have drunk in two hours. People don’t pop like balloons even after a medium cup of soda.
I have learned four things from this situation. The first one is that I have a medium size face. The second thing is that I can never trust American food portions or even assume that I know them well enough. The third one is that the medium size of popcorn is enough to make me feel sick from even smelling popcorn for a year. The last thing is that I love American food no matter what! Well, I love it until I get a size medium of soda and popcorn. That’s when I go back to my love-hate relationship with it.
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Also, this story didn’t teach me anything. In 2017 my friends and I went to ‘all you can eat sushi restaurant’ in Milan, Italy. A boat of sushi sounded nicely only on the menu! In reality, we cried trying to finish everything that we have ordered even before that boat. I didn’t eat sushi for two months after that day.
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Daria Biryukova is a student at American University in Bulgaria with a major in Journalism and Mass Communications and a minor in Mathematics. She stopped buying snacks at the cinema.
