The first guest post in the Quest for Food series comes from Mindy of Mindy’s Mouthful. She’s graciously agreed to share with us how her year-long expatriate experience challenged the way she cooks and the way her family eats. Now that she’s back in the US she is trying to incorporate the healthy, culturally inspired habits she acquired while living in France.
It seems like forever ago when I found out that I was moving to France. I had an entire year to prepare, but what I didn’t end up being prepared for was how much time I actually had on my hands. Of course, I was busy with our two-year-old daughter and with 
helping my husband, who was acting as the director of our college’s study abroad program in Strasbourg, since I also work for the same school, but it was nothing compared to having to juggle all of these things at home and work a full-time job.
When I set foot in the local French grocery store, I was a little befuddled…it was so small. But it had the best vegetable section, and then when I started looking around, it also had a gigantic dairy section with every cheese imaginable. And in fact, upon closer inspection, the only things it was really missing were many of the prepackaged, highly processed foods I had come to rely on in the United States.
Of course, it had a breakfast food section and chips and soda and many of the junk and/or convenience foods that we have in the United States, but the main difference was that the ratio of fresh and packaged foods that were actually food (without all of the strange additives that we rely on in the U.S.) to bad-for-you convenience foods seemed to be exactly opposite of a U.S. grocery store.
When I started thinking about my return to the United States, I really realized how difficult it was going to be to keep up the good habits that I picked up in France. I had always been good about keeping fresh vegetables in our diet, but I knew the selection in my local grocery store in Kentucky was not going to have the variety and quality that I came to rely upon in my French grocery store.
P.S. In case you are just stopping by, I’m in the process of moving back to the US and am currently on an extended trip in SE Asia. I have weekly guest posts lined up this month and will be stopping by with foodie pictures from our travels as time permits.
Hi All – Sorry about the commenting problems. It should be corrected now. Thanks Mindy for a great post!
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Mindy this was a really great article. I loved reading about your experience at having to adjust to French culture. Did you find that the produce was expensive, like how it is in the states, or was it more moderately priced since there was more of a demand for it? 🙂
Andrea, I’m only getting to answering this months later (!), so I hope that you’ll end up seeing it eventually, but no, the prices weren’t more, and in fact, if you shopped seasonally, which I ended up doing most of the time, it was actually cheaper.