Looking Out: Cheese is always a good choice on a world food tour

My beloved wife, Marsha, and I wandered into an international market in a big city the other day. It was fascinating.

There were sausages, vegetables and mystery foods in boxes and bottles.

“Just read the label,” I say to Marsha as she ponders a rack of what looks like vinegar bottles.

“They aren’t in English,” she says, handing me a bottle.

“It says here that it is balsamic vinegar of the highest quality,” I say.

“Sure it does,” she says. “In Polish.”

“I think it might be Russian,” I say.

“You don’t know how to read Russian or Polish,” she says.

“Maybe it’s Greek,” I say, squinting at the label.

“Or Greek,” she says.

“What?”

“You don’t read Greek either,” she says.

“I still remember some of my Spanish,” I say, although it has been many years since I took classes in that lovely language. My proficiency was very high, in my own mind, but my Spanish teachers mistakenly thought otherwise. It’s no wonder — they were thinking in a foreign language while I was thinking in English.

“The products in this store don’t seem to be labeled in Spanish. It’s all has those Cyrillic letters. Or something,” she says.

“I noticed that,” I say. “I also noticed that nobody in here is speaking English. Let’s buy some stuff, take it home and figure out what it is.”

Marsha ends up with a bottle of red wine from Serbia, and I buy a hunk of cheese and a box of some kind of candy.

She has yet to work up the courage to try the wine, but we both chowed down on the candy and cheese. (As is usual with cheese in our home, when I say that we both ate it, what I really mean is that I ate 98% of it and Marsha had a bite. She needs to learn to eat faster.)

“So what’s holding you back from trying the wine?” I ask.

“It might not be good,” she says.

“It is probably good,” I say, although as a non-drinker I don’t qualify as an expert.

“Maybe,” she says. “But who’s to know?”

“For one, the person that opens the bottle and drinks it,” I say. “And also Serbians, unless you have some information about the Balkan people that reflects poorly on their sense of taste.”

“Not at all. I just can’t read the label,” she says.

“I can’t read the label on the cheese, either. I don’t even know what country it comesfrom,” I say.

“You mean you couldn’t read it. It’s all gone. I had one bite.”

“You need to learn to eat faster.”

“The candy is good,” she says, ignoring my speed-eating advice.

“You mean it was good,” I say. “Where did it come from, anyway?”

“Search me,” she says. “And what do you mean it was good? Surely, it’s not all gone.”

“Yes, it is. You ate it all,” I say.

She rolls her eyes as she tells me she wants to go back to the store and buy more of the candy.

That’s fine with me. It was a good adventure from which we gained a very good chunk of cheese, some very good candy, and a very fine bottle of wine. Probably.

Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Jim Whitehouse: Cheese is always a good choice on a world food tour