French Mustard Glasses

Fact:  a lot of mustard sold in France is actually sold in drinking glasses; this type of packaging includes cornichons (pickles) too.  Similar to the fast food give-away gimmicks I collected as a child; these glasses mark the childhood of almost every French person, albeit the head of Mayor McCheese is not etched into the glass.  Some people hate them, some love them, but they come in as many styles as there are tastes.  There are series with popular cartoon characters, colored glass, clear glass, stemware, and even cocktail glasses.  When Christophe bought the house over 10 years ago, the house was filled with odds and ends, including a cupboard full of old mustard glasses.  I’ve been using them for years and never knew what I was drinking out of.  I like them, but honesty, we rarely buy mustard in small enough quantities to get a glass.  We buy family size, even though there are only three of us, and one doesn’t even eat mustard.  We cook a lot with it and bring jars upon jars of it back to the States with us every year because real Dijon mustard is hard to find.  The small jars we do buy are yellow mustard; a must have when we have American style hamburgers.  Yes, the glasses are just a marketing scheme, but they work, just like Ronald McDonald plates that come out every year from my mother’s cabinet or the flavor themed kool-aid plastic cups that are stacked up high somewhere in the back.  I’m not going to go out and try to get me the full collection, but if a nice one comes along that can hold a few ice cubes and a health splash of bourbon, I’m keeping it.