Reflexion on food and identity

I was thinking about this entry I made not so long ago, and I think why many associate food with national and regional identity is because it is so dependent of its environment. Sure, there are things we can find everywhere (Cadbury's chocolate, Pringles, etc), but as the movie Pulp Fiction illustrated, even the food in MacDonalds differs slightly from place to place, if only in name. But it is more fundamental than this. For example, an English apple and one taken from one of our apple trees in Chicoutimi are not only of different variety, but have also grown from a different soil, in a different environment, hence it will taste different.There is also the question of freshness: if one wants Boivin cheese, especially their cheese curds the best place to get it is where they make it so fresh it's still squishy when you chew it, an experience I lived numerous times, but will most likely be foreign to many Montrealers and almost every non Quebeckers. (And regarding the you are all missing something, by the way, ask my wife, she was lucky enough to eat it like this once, I am sure she does not understand how priviledged she was). Talking about cheese curds, it is something that is rare outside Québec, so it makes it a rarity for the expat I am. In the Lac-Saint-Jean region (and to a lesser extend in Saguenay), blueberries grow in large quantities, so much that we are nicknamed after the fruit. Of course, no blueberry here tastes quite the same as in my region. And we have a special chocolate and blueberry dessert (okay, blueberries covered with dark chocolate) made by the Pères trappistes (monks from the Mistassini lake, some good things came out of the Catholic church of which I will always be grateful) that is absolutely delicious and cannot be find anywhere else than in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean (or almost). Fudge, made with or without maple syrup, which we call sucre à la crème (chocolate fudge we simply call it fudge), is a common delicacy in Québec, like poor people's candy, here it is rarer and more expensive, and does not have the same cultural reasonance, obviously. And I haven't talked about the many desserts (or even savoury meals) made with maple syrup, or the products of the hunt essential to make a real good tourtière. Food is about mental needs as much as physical ones.