The specific item I remember quite well because of the hubbub it caused (apparently, my astonishment was was considered insulting) was tiramisu. I don't think that is pretentious. It's available from common supermarkets, but this was a few miles outside of Gap, Pennsylvania. I don't know the area well, but Gap is only a town of a thousand people that likely doesn't have restaurants. Lancaster would have, given it has a college.

It's not like I got a detailed life history from these people, but if you ever get the chance, the level of culture shock can be striking. The biggest event of my time there was the neighbor's horse that was used to drive the plows sustaining an enormous gash on its front right leg. That effectively stopped work as people rushed to try and stitch it up. With no machinery, they're entirely reliant on horses to accomplish any meaningful field work, so a serious injury to one can severely impact yield.

They are prepared for that, though. Thanks to not making much in the way of purchases of virtually anything from the outside world, resources only flow in so they have a surplus of everything they need to last years if they need to hunker down. Any form of community wealth is entirely kept in the community, so there were apparently some fairly vast intergenerational savings built up.

So I don't know if the concern was really that being down a plow was going to have any material impact on anyone's ability to eat, but it was dramatic nonetheless. I didn't ask, but I got the impression the guy driving the plow was as distraught as he was because he considered the horse a friend. He seemed distressed by the amount of pain it was in.