Maggie's Farm

For Saturday lunches, my father made grilled cheese sandwiches with my mother's green tomato relish inside. Grilled on both sides. Was there ham inside? I'll have to ask my sister. Delicious.
Velveeta was the cheese. Déclassé, I admit, but it went quite well with the green tomato relish.

A musician neighbor spent a post-baccalaureate year in France. Many of her meals consisted of a baguette with cheese inside. Inexpensive and tasty. No Velveeta!

The shorthand for grilled cheese sandwich in short-order restaurants is GRCH. At least it was when I worked at them.

I have never been to France, but my experience with the French in the US and in Latin America has not been entirely positive---the most positive way I can express it. A French woman, whom I knew from several weeks on the Gringo Trail, told me that some of her paisans had hitched around the US. Hitching was common in the '70s. I did it. She told me that many times Americans who gave rides to their paisans had invited them to spend the night at their houses. She told me that there was something sick about Americans that they would be so friendly to strangers. I made no reply. But it's not just Americans of the North variety. A number of times in Latin America I had been invited to spend the night.

I am reminded of Europeans who had spent all or most of their childhood in Latin America, either expats or immigrants, who had gone to Germany for work or university. They told me that Germans wouldn't have anything to do with them as their family hadn't been in the town for generations. A German national, expat because of his father's mining engineer work in Peru, was among those who told me this.

So, it's not just French versus Americans. Rather, Europeans versus the Americas. OTOH, given the French experience with German strangers, perhaps their attitude is justified.