January 31 - Market Day: Moscow Baguette

A Moscow Baguette baked in Bensenville, Illinois.

By Magdalena I. García

Choosing bread at Fresh Farms Market is not an easy task. If you’re a carb queen like me, your mouth waters as you walk past the shelves of breads made according to recipes from around the world: loafs, rolls, flat breads, and baguettes. And they are White, wheat, rye, pumpernickel, and every shade in between. I settled on a Moscow Baguette as my international item of the week.

This was Friday morning, and I was having my father and my uncle over for dinner (we’ve sort of adopted them until my mother returns from a trip to Cuba). So as I drove home with my baguette from a former enemy republic, I settled on a plan: I would slice it up, heat it up, and serve it without revealing the bread’s name. You see, the Soviet Union supported Castro’s Cuba for decades, so conservative Cuban exiles get nauseous at the thought of Soviet delicacies. And when you couple this with affiliation to the Republican Party, well, it can cause an acute case of acid reflux.

But to be fair, Cubans on the island don’t really care for anything Soviet either. Come to think of it, it’s really ironic that despite our differences all Cubans—whether 90 miles South or North of Key West—seem to share this one sentiment: we’ll take American goods over Russian stuff any day of the week. And this sentiment is not limited to food, although clearly Cubans prefer American Deviled Ham to carne rusa (Russian canned meat). Take television, for example. For decades after the so-called triumph of the Revolution, Cubans continued to enjoy classic American cartoons, like Felix the Cat and Betty Boop, alongside day-long speeches on land reform and military might from Comrade Fidel. And when Russian cartoons finally replaced the Yankee productions, Cubans were not happy campers.

Well, back to my dinner. The strategy worked. My father and my uncle enjoyed the Moscow Baguette (they had no reason to be suspicious; it looks a lot like its French counterpart). And then, towards the end of dinner, I casually revealed the bread’s true identity. No big deal. Phew! I wonder what did it? Was it the Russian proverb printed on the label? “A meal without bread is as living life without holidays.” Or was it the fact that the bread is baked by Russian refugees who live in Bensenville, Illinois? I guess I'll have to chew on that one for a while.