Tonight was Mexican night, at least I had a hankering for salt and cumin. Thanks to my family, Mexican night mimicked the stuff across the pond with a heavy dose of MSG in the Taco Bell Fajita seasoning. Oh heaven. Last weekend someone put stickers on our mailboxes that said, “Montag ist Reistag (Monday is rice day)” -some kind of advertisement for Uncle Ben’s. But oh contre! Monday is Mexican night. All the flour tortillas were sold out at the neighborhood store and the crunchy corn shells are only sold at the expensive department stores in the city center. Hey, No problemo. Now it’s nacho night.
Darn. Some of you guys have already seen the new layout. You all are quick. Yep, it commemorates the winter season, which isn’t always blue skies and brilliant white snow. Most of the time it’s grey, hazy pale lavender, nevertheless this time of year possesses its own beauty, which I’m very slowly getting accustomed to recognizing. In a way, I consider this layout an offering to the winter gods to make it more like winter. It’s a bit too warm for Glühwein and the Weinnachtsmarkt (Christmas market). Stupid logic would suggest the sooner winter comes the quicker I can get it over with. But dumb luck doesn’t matter in this case. We leave in about 3 weeks for Florida and return in the middle of January. It will be a shock the body won’t be able to avoid.
So last week I attempted a quick mock-up of Thanksgiving. Maribeth made me do it. She wouldn’t stop writing about all the goodies she was going, in the process of, had cooked up. I concentrated on the “Beilage” or side dishes with mashed potatoes inspired by my father’s cooking, and a sweet corn cake recipe I can’t wait to try again, that was delicious. It still needs some doctoring, though.
I bought a rotisserie chicken from the Wochenmarkt about 50 m down the street. The chicken man was speaking to some animated old guy when I strolled up to his traveling chicken roasting truck. I asked for a whole chicken and he asked if I wanted to eat it there or take it home with me. Funny man. Then he asked me where I’m from, Florida. Am I visiting. Do I live here. No. Yes. What am I doing here. I’m a student. Old guy chimes in and asks where? Florida. Ooooh! Old guy has relatives in Florida but its too far, like 19 hours! (more like 11 hours) All the while I’m impressed that I understand either one of these guys. Chicken man is either Italian or Turkish, his words are so jumbled and the intonation is mindboggling. I was invited to pick up another chicken next Thursday for 5.50 Euro. I feel I’ve passed the initiation, hehe.
The chicken was great, a little dry cause I bought it a few hours before it was served but our American guest, Mandy and her German fiancé, Fabian, seemed pleased with the meal. When we arrive in Florida, I think I will stock up on some canned cranberry sauce. That was a prize I definitely missed.
Wow… gorgeous new site template, nice choice! And thank you very much for displaying our banner.
:thumbup:
Love the new look. And you’re right, Germany in the winter is really this color!
Glad you had a Thanksgiving, even if it didn’t have the traditional turkey. But chicken’ll do!
I’m still recovering from that holiday. I told my cousin, Janet, that on Christmas is just her family, me, Hubby and the puppies!!!:thumbup:
Out of curiousity was chicken simply your preference or would turkey have been more difficult to obtain?
I need to gather up some Mexican food ingredients and have a Mexican night sometime. Being in Southern California makes for easy ingredient shopping of that sort
mexican night, huh? sounds good. our monday was BLT night. Yup, Paul got the nitrate-free bacon – and it was good :thumbup: No, it didn’t crunch up, but if I only expect canadian bacon/ham, then it hit the spot – salty and fatty!
tonight was sausage and sauerkraut.
Wendy’s is advertising a new burger. Bacon, monterary cheese and jalapenoa with cheese sause in between 2 hamburger patties! A little overboard, of course, but I def want to try it. Never has cheese and jalapenos on a burger before.
@JT: Thanks for the thumbers. I think your banner is the coolest I have displayed.
@Maribeth: That’ll be sweet for Christmas, puppies!
@James: Great question and sorry I didn’t have time to elaborate in the post above. As you know, Thanksgiving is an American tradition, maybe in places like Frankfurt or Kaiserlautern chances are greater of finding the turkey-pot. Sometimes you can get lucky and find a rogue butterball in a batch of frozen chickens at a local Tenglemann’s.
Apparently the turkeys make their appearance in December, a popular dish during the Christmas holidays. So if one desperately wants to cook-up the whole Thanksgiving shabang in Munich, the Hohenrainer in the Viktualienmarkt Market (an expensive, weekly open market/tourist trap) sells fresh Turkeys. You have to order 2 weeks in advanced and it costs about 9.00 Euro per kilogram. Honestly, I don’t know how I could stuff a 6 kilo turkey in my tiny oven, hehe. So in a nutshell, chicken was a no-brainer. One of these years I’ll get the gizzards to cook the real deal.
@ Pinger: Hey! We only have MickeyDs and BK, but over the past year they’ve been selling burgers with jalapenos and spreadable cheese. I haven’t tried it either. But maybe today… for comparison purposes