Marmite on the Moon
TUESDAY: Lunch is mushroom tarragon paté and cream cheese on a sundried tomato rustic roll. I know it sounds a bit odd, but I do like to prove that us pescaveggies can eat a wide variety of fascinating and delicious things.
Speaking of fascinating and delicious brings me to the namesake of this blog: Marmite. For any readers who have never met Marmite, it's a brewer's yeast extract first introduced in 1902 in Burton-on-Trent, from whence Bass Ale and many other famous British ales originated. If you want to know any more, check out my Marmite page or the Marmite FAQ.
The other day I was talking to a workmate about how years ago, after discovering the gooey black magic of Marmite during a holiday in the UK, I was excited to find I could buy Marmite back in America. Perhaps not at the average corner grocery, but at my gourmet liquor deli in California and at an Italian deli in Seattle. (Of course Marmite isn't Italian; but this deli stocked a wide range of European goodies.)
As Marmite is such a unique substance, with their advertising motto saying it all -- you either love it or hate it -- it has become one of those comfort foods from home that Brits sometimes pack when they travel to other countries, along with HP Sauce, Henderson's Relish, and good old fashioned English tea bags. I generally find this habit a bit offensive. I mean, if you're going to visit another culture you should do as they do and not foist your own culture upon them. But in the case of relocating to another country and living there for awhile, I can see how one might be tempted to bring along a treat from home.
Which brings me to the original topic of our conversation: just how far abroad has Marmite actually spread? Further than the edges of an American slice of toast? Do Canadians eat Marmite? Does Vegemite have a monopoly on Australia?
I decided to do a little investigation on the Internet to find out which nationalities speak Marmite. Obviously the French do, as the French marmite is a rounded earthenware cooking pot which inspired the yeasty spread's name. To this day there is still a picture of a marmite on the label. What I learned was that one can purchase Marmite at several shops in Paris, although according to one blogger the French describe Marmite as déguelasse which means "gross". But this comment could relate to the 50% of the French population who would statistically hate Marmite whether they've tried it or not. And the other 50% might love it. This is of course assuming the Marmite love/hate thing has travelled across the Channel.
What impresses me is the fact that Marmite can be purchased all over the world. It can be found at many shops all over the USA, Australia (where it's called OurMate), and South Africa, and at any grocery store in Canada. There are three German cities where one can purchase the black goo; one source in Rome; one shop in Gothenberg, Sweden; two places in Norway; and one shop in Auckland, New Zealand. It can also be purchased in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Cyprus, Israel (where the more liberal Jews consider it kosher enough), Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and all over Singapore. And although it's not strictly sold in the Czech Republic a similar product made by Tesco is available.
Whether you can buy Marmite in Greenland or Antarctica is debatable. And I wouldn't expect to find it in Madagascar or Bolivia or Togo. But who knows? I suppose wherever the Brits travel is fair game. I seriously doubt one can find Marmite on the moon -- unless, of course, one of the astronauts happened to leave a jar up there along with all those Hasselblad cameras.
I wonder if there have been any Marmite-loving astronauts. Imagine if one had accidentally let a jar of Marmite escape into the cosmos, perhaps when she or he was conducting an experiment with Marmite while taking a space walk. Among all the thousands of satellites, objects, tools, gloves, and other debris orbiting the Earth, there might be a jar of Marmite -- a theory I expect you can either love or hate.
