American Magic

We had a barbecue this weekend. There were about 20 people in attendance including myself, my roommates, a Greek-Chinese translator, a Spanish-Chinese translator and then mostly Italian architects. My contributions to the meal were two bottles of rum and a vanilla cake made from a box, so it was kind of embarrassing when all the Europeans started gushing about how delicious the cake was (don't thank me, thank Betty Crocker, guys!). 

As I explained this box-cake thing to my Italian roommate he said the other day he was quite surprised to find our other roommate (also American, not much of a cook) whipping up pancakes in the kitchen, but then he learned that you could buy this box from the import grocer and just add water. 

"If you'd been born in America, you too would also already know this magic," I explained.