Got addicted to the Brit green grocer, really fresh meats and dairies ( where else can you pour cream from the top of your milk? ), ridiculously rich pastries and dense breads. I'm not a big eater, either.
That's the other thing, I think -- freshness. I could never understand the badmouthing of Midwest food when I was a kid, until it dawned on me that all the people badmouthing it were eating in restaurants. Well, yeah, Midwest restaurant food back then was not the best, but Midwesterners didn't eat out for the food -- they ate out to socialize. The good food was home cooked, and part of the reason home food was so good was it was fresh -- cooked to order, often as not, fruit and vegetables in season, etc. If you can get corn on the cob from a farm stand that was picked on request, why in the world would you go mucking it up with anything? I don't even put salt or butter on mine.
Canned or frozen vegetables get doctored up, sure, but they never really compare to the fresh stuff. There are so many super-simple recipes that taste incredible made with fresh ingredients that taste flat and boring made with standard supermarket fare. For that matter, "standard supermarket fare" varies from place to place. A friend of ours moved here from the east coast, and he whined and moaned constantly about how New York City and the East Coast were so much better when it came to everything,
except he was pure astonished at the quality and quantity of fruit and vegetables at his local supermarket. And he didn't even go to a supermarket favored by home cooks! It's just that, around here, even the people who hardly cook know what good fresh food looks like.
Places where he's mostly lived, everyone eats out every chance they get, so no one insists on good, fresh fruit and vegetables in their grocery stores, and no one gets them, either. Sort of like how it used to be hard to find file powder outside of the South -- local demand determines what you can get hold of. Even locally, you can tell the difference between a store patronized by people who mostly eat out, versus one where a fair percentage of the clientele cooks regular, and proper, meals. Home cooking is a luxury, in the sense that it takes time, not just the time to make it, but the time to learn in, and if all the adults in the home work full time, that's just not the 'luxury' most people pick. So they go for more highly flavored stuff rather than the simple stuff that relies on freshness to be good.
I piece my pastry as well. Some Big Name cook once said that he doesn't trust home cooking that looks too pretty, and he was referring specifically to pie crust, so I cling to that.