Thai Cream Crackers in Guanajuato

This comes smack in the category, “you know it’s a global world when . . .” So the local supermarket is having a promotion of Thai food products. Thai!

Now Thailand is a favorite honeymoon destination for well-to-do young Mexicans. And Jade de León, the fast food Cantonese place in the food court in the main shopping mall in León, did try adding their version of Thai, though it only lasted a few months. Mexico, which embraces sushi and spaghetti, is not yet on the Thai wave.

But there they are: Thai canned jackfruit, candies, bottled sauces, instant coffee, and (hurrah) crystallized ginger, lined up on the shelves of Mega. Two weeks later, the whole lot are discounted. This was not one of marketing’s more glorious moments.

Meanwhile I have stocked up on cream crackers. My ur-food in health and sickness (yes, I eat this to quell a queasy stomach) is my childhood favorite, wonderful aged cheddar and cream crackers, first manufactured in their current form by Jacobs in their Dublin factory in 1885. Neither of course are available in Mexico, at least in any form an English farm girl recognizes.

Until Thai cream crackers come along. Crackers are the culinary signature of the British Empire and its economic outposts as I discovered in Hawaii. There Asian stores had versions of cream crackers made in half a dozen different countries. And I also discovered that many of them are super flaky and delicious.

So at 5o cents a box, I loaded up with a dozen or so. No they weren’t made by Jacobs, or Huntley and Palmers, or even General Mills but they were made by the Imperial General Foods Industry Co., Ltd of Thailand.

Delicious they are. But I do have one residual worry. The fourth ingredient listed is puré de fresa, strawberry puree. Now what the dickens is strawberry puree doing in cream crackers?

Terrific crackers. But I’m torn between smiles, I mean food is so often so funny isn’t it?, and a slight worry about cream crackers made with strawberry puree.

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