And we were on a train to Odessa, Ukraine, and we shared our compartment with a cook, who was going to get off in Lviv, and he was telling us a lot of funny stories, but what made him laugh, and especially I thought it was a laugh of the cook in the first place, was that he tried our trial mix: peanuts, pretzels, almonds, sunflower seed, etc., and chocolate. He said: oh, sweet and salty, that must be something American. He found it pretty weird and funny.

I thought about it as something quite original too, people eating cranberries on chicken, polish sausage dipped in a maple syrop and mixed with wafles, or maple syrop pancakes bacon mix.

Sugar is a very uncommon thing to find in a dinner in Poland. So when I came to America, I ate cranberries last, as a dessert, and made sure that on my plate sausage will not touch any waffle with syrop, which automatically became a dessert as well.

But everything changed, my sugar-salt philosophy broke down, my taste buds surrendered, and I am a new man now. Maybe I still don’t follow Twins schedule, maybe still don’t listen to country too much, or never killed a turkey, but something American is in me now: I really like acorn squash baked and served with butter, salt and pepper. And I also enjoy sweet potatoes, with butter, salt and pepper too.

I think now I understand why Americans don’t mind mixing sweet and salty. It’s in their blood, every fall they eat acorns, butternuts, and buttercups, and it just taste very very good with salt, it can’t be ate without it.

Once again America is being a land of freedom, where people can freely eat sugar and salt on one plate in peace – unlikely in old, conservative Europe.