"Y para el postre tenemos: flan, natillas, queso con membrillo, cuajada, tarta de chocolate, mandarinas o plátano."
I found it weird the first time I was eating dinner in a restaurant, and at the end of the list of dessert choices was a banana. Or mandarin oranges. Or a plate of strawberries. Brought out just like that: a piece of fruit on a plate.
It shouldn't be weird. Fruit is nature's dessert, after all. But it was. The inevitable comparison with home popped into my head, and I couldn't imagine a nice, sit-down restaurant serving you a piece of fruit on a plate. And even if they did, would anyone order it? But sometimes you're in the mood for a lighter dessert, or a healthier dessert.
Fruit is not only nature's dessert, it's nature's convenience food. Some American friends and I were joking about how our students here wouldn't even recognize the recess snacks our childhood selves used to take to school. A banana, an orange or an apple? Or Fruit Roll-ups, Fun Fruits, and Fruit Gushers? My students and colleagues at the high school almost exclusively snack on fruit, or maybe a homemade sandwich on crusty bread or a digestive or arrowroot biscuit. It's just so simple.
The striking thing when you go into a supermarket or fruit and vegetable market is the state of the fruit and vegetables. They're deformed, assymetrical, spotty. Perfectly edible and in great shape, but visually they don't compare with the picture-perfect, genetically modified, waxed and colour-injected produce in North American supermarkets. It's a nice reminder of what fruit and veg are supposed to look like.
