Food! Essen! A few of our Favorite things.

A Few of our Favorite Things

There are tons of things that we are discovering on this German Adventure. One thing we all love is the Yoghurt here.

We have been eating so much yoghurt that I decided I wanted to try to make it. In the U.S., it will be impossible to find some of the flavors they have here (more about those later). 

It is so easy to make. All you need is your choice of milk, a container of plain yoghurt and a pot (with a lid) to warm the milk. A thermometer comes in handy, but isn't a must. You will also need either a yoghurt maker or a slightly warm place to put your pot.

Just warm the milk to 42 degrees Celsius.  If you don't have a thermometer, just warm your milk a little. It should feel a little warm, but nowhere near hot. Remove it from the heat and stir in a few tablespoons of  the plain yoghurt. Now, either pour the liquid into your yoghurt maker or put a lid on the pot and place it in the oven with the oven light on.

That is it!

In 12 to 14 hours you will have yoghurt! We have tried making it both ways and were successful each time.

The last time we visited the Kellersmann family, I mentioned my desire to try making yoghurt. Matthias was kind enough to not only show me how to make it, but to lend me his spare yoghurt maker.

Paton would eat an entire 500 gram tub (this is about a quart) of Yoghurt if I let him.  German stores have plenty of the traditionally fruit flavored yoghurt such as strawberry and mixed berry.  Most, however, are with fruit not usually put in Yoghurt in the US.   Fruits like dates, grapes, papaya passionfruit and other mix-ins such as oatmeal or other grains I am not familiar with. Sounds strange, but that is one of the few things I will really miss when we go back to the U.S. Paton's favorite is Stracciatella - it is vanilla yoghurt with chocolate shavings. It is also a very popular ice cream. Stracciatella  is similar to chocolate chip ice cream, but like many things here, it not quite the same!

Spätzle is another thing we will miss. It is basically a potato pasta that is used with many meat dishes. We have only ever had it with meat and broth.  I have never seen it with a heavy sauce. Of course, it is a dish eaten mostly in the south of Germany so we haven't seen it much here in Münster

I can't even begin to tell you about the sausages! I found this picture on the Wikipedia page, but I could easily take a similar picture from what is in my fridge (including some bake-to-finish Brötchen).

There are so many different kinds of Wurst here and they are all so good. Normally they are grilled (braten), which then becomes a gebratene Wurst or "Bratwurst". I once asked a German if they boiled their Brats in beer, which is the way the cool kids cook a bratwurst in the U.S. I will never forget the look of disgust my German friend gave me. "Never!" was his answer.

Pizza is also a little different here than in the U.S. We had a very good time making pizzas with our friends Carlos and Adriana. I met Adriana in my first German as a second language class. We sat next to each other and immediately became friends. We quickly realized that we are also neighbors!

Carlos is a theoretical physicist by trade, but is has some mad pizza dough making skills!

Chocolate is another thing we will miss when we go back home. Whenever we pass through the chocolate aisles, yes I did mean aisles, we keep an eye out for anything we want to try. We learned the hard way that if we see some thing we want to try, we have to get it them since we may never see it again. Of course they never run out of chocolate.

I can also make versions of our favorite foods from back home. A few days ago, we had some other friends over for dinner. They were excited to try some American food. I tried to think of dishes that are not ever eaten in Germany.

I made a roasted chicken. It sounds pretty easy right? But let me tell you, finding a whole chicken to roast was not so easy! There are little, tiny chickens in the grocery stores that are boiled for soup, but you would have to roast 3 or 4 of them to feed 6 people. We ended up going to the Metzgeri (butcher shop) and bought a whole chicken (6 pounds) for about $20. Ouch! (But it baked up nicely.)

I also made  sweet potatoes as well as a green bean casserole. We ended the night with an American style apple pie. There is Apfel Kuchen in Germany. It is more of an apple cake than pie, so an apple pie was new for our friends.

I must say that this is the prettiest apple pie I have ever made.

A few other things we have tried here and really like:

Fruit flavored buttermilk

Sugar Beet syrup - Zuckerrüben sirup. 

This is so wonderful. German sugar comes from sugar beets rather than sugar cane. We discovered this little treasure at the Kellersmann home. It doesn't look to impressive, but once you taste it you are hooked! 

It costs about $1.50 in Germany and about $13 in the U.S.

Quark is another food staple the Kellersmann family introduced us to. It is a dairy product with no U.S. equivalent. The closest you could get is cottage cheese. It is considered a health food here as it is low in fat but high in protein. It is delicious on a piece of toasted bread with a little zuckerrübensirup! This may be something else I have to make in the U.S.

It may not look pretty, but I could eat this for every meal and be happy.

One of Russell's favorite treats are these little cookies. To be honest, it is really a chocolate bar with a little cookie stuck to it.

Another favorite for the boys is an enormous version of a Hostess cupcake. Russell especially likes these as an afternoon snack - he has actually lost weight since we got here from all of the biking, so don't worry about him.

Some days we see something in the grocery store and just buy them.  These are stuffed cabbages. I sauteed them and then steamed them in a vegetable broth. Even the boys liked them!

This last picture is of our anniversary dinner - and not remotely German. It was delicious! Russell and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this year. He asked one of his colleagues for a few restaurant recommendations, but when we went to them they were all so busy and loud that I didn't want to eat there. I hate restaurants where the atmosphere is so loud you can't hear each other.

We walked around a bit (being Münster, it was cold AND raining) until we saw a quiet little Chinese place. We ordered the two person meal and ended up with enough food for four people. Each bowl had a different meat: pork, chicken, beef and duck. It's funny that "foreign" food isn't the same here either. It was Chinese food with a German accent - the egg rolls were about double the size, and there was no fortune cookie at the end.

We look at our life here as an adventure. We make ourselves go out and try things. Even though it is a little scary sometimes, we put ourselves in situations where we HAVE to speak German. It is the only way to experience living here. If we just stayed in our apartment and never pushed ourselves into situations where we are uncomfortable we would never grow from our experience!