1) Germans do not know the difference between cupcakes and muffins. For whatever reason they are generally familiar with the latter, but now that the Cupcake Bakery Trend has hit Europe, they need to be educated on how the two treats differ (Americans know that muffins are for breakfast or to have with tea/coffee. A cupcake is not necessarily less healthy, but is not ever (intended as) a breakfast food and most always has frosting (though just to make it interesting, a muffin can have glaze or streusel). I will add that I've always thought the cupcake trend was silly in the US and it is even sillier here. I don't really have a problem with the occasional cupcake bakery (though I was seriously underwhelmed by Magnolia in New York the couple times I went -- not remotely worth waiting in line for (if there still is a line...I wouldn't know) or bakeries in general selling cupcakes. Actually, I really do like cupcakes (especially blackbottom or peanut butter with chocolate frosting), but they are so easy to make and take really no time at all and I'd just rather go out for something a bit more crafted. And while Berlin may not be Vienna or some other yummier cafe city, the German-speaking world is supposed to make good Kuchen. My point: they can do better than cupcakes. Anyway, Cupcake, the cupcake bakery that opened a while back near my apartment (the one at Zionskirchplatz, not to be confused with the one in Friedrichshein. I haven't been to that one, so I can't comment, though I am very sorry for linking to it before!) is owned by an American/Brit (not sure) so I can't exactly hold the Fatherland responsible for it, but ... my cupcake was dry and my espresso macchiatto undrinkable. I have heard more favorable reviews, but when in Rome (or Berlin as the case may be): I'm going around the corner to Cake, where you can get a huge piece of beautiful cake (I had a walnut cake with walnut buttercream; it was really exquisite -- perfect crumb, delicate, but distinct walnutty flavor, and buttercream frosting that doesn't make you feel like you've eaten a tub of crisco). Oops, that turned into a bit of rant (as is often my way....)
2. Germans don't know how to eat edamame: At my weekly lunch gig a while back I made a Japanese meal that included a bowl of salted edamame. I've been in Berlin long enough to guess that Germans might not be familiar with this snack (sushi, though most often mediocre, is extremely popular here. I have seen edamame on the menu a bunch of times, but never gotten it for free at the beginning of the meal as is often the case in the US), so I asked the woman who coordinates the lunches if she/they knew what edamame/frische Sojabohnen (fresh soybeans) are and how to eat them). She said yes and looked mildly insulted so I left it at that...only to come into the dining area a while later to find many of them eating edamame with a knife and fork. I'm not saying it's wrong ... maybe in Japan they don't eat edamame with their fingers as we do, but to my barbaric American eyes, it was pretty amusing.
3. How to use a napkin (like an American would): I was taught (as I think is the custom in the states), to put my napkin on my lap. I mostly do it without even thinking about it. Germans don't - they leave the napkin next to their plate. I don't think I have a particular lot of trouble getting food into my mouth, but I do wipe the corners of my mouth and somehow it ends up dirty and crumpled by the end of the meal. This must happen to other Americans because I didn't realize this was happening until a few months into my time here in the Vaterland, but I use my napkin a lot throughout the meal. I am often the only non-German at a meal and unless we are eating something really mess, I'm always the only one who has used their napkin? I guess Americans are barbarian slobs...
4. And something that I don't know: why can't you buy milk in quantities bigger than a liter (think quart) here? This is a (if not America's) dairyland. I have often seen youths drinking entire liters of milk/drinkable yogurt/buttermilk/etc. Our neighborhood is teeming with Kinder: don't they drink milk? The most popular coffee beverage here is Milchkaffee -- made with, you guessed it, lots of milk! Am I the only one making coffee at home? Mein Freund confirms that this is not limited to Berlin or urban areas and reports that his poor Mutter with four teenage sons also had to buy their milk in liters. It's not the end of the world as I am basically a professional grocery shopper and make an average of a trip a day, but seriously, it doesn't make sense, does it?
5. I don't know how to use a knife (like a German). I've tried, but I think my fingers have aged past the point of learning new motions or something. Germans use their knife to skillfully push food onto their fork. I do ok if I have a piece of bread to nudge with, but lacking bread, I often end up trying to be discreet with my fingers. I think earlier Generations of Americans (who were often German, no?) knew how to do this, but the melting pot seems to have done away with it. Schade, nein?
Monday, February 4, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Grüne Woche: nicht so grün
First, I have to say that I have no idea why Blogger thinks I want to blog in Hindi. I think am working it out so that it doesn't look like Hindi to you, but it's really quite an effort and quite annoying. Nothing against Hindi, I'm just personally more interested in blogging in English with the occasional German word thrown in for added color. I also have no idea why random Portuguese/Brazilian people continue (ok, only twice) to post random comments on my blog. I guess I'm not exactly opposed, but it does seem somewhat unnecessary.
Anyway, the big food event of the week was Grüne Woche.
This is a ginormous "exhibition for the Food Industry, Agriculture and Horticulture" that takes place annually in Berlin. (Have you ever seen a sillier ad for such an event? It's as if this woman has never seen food before.) Anyway, we went on Tuesday after 3 pm and expected not too much a crowd. We were wrong. It was as if all of Berlin's senior citizens had been picked up and deposited in the massive convention center. Really, you could hardly move, but I'm not much of a crowd-phobic person and having lived in some places with a lot of people, I'm pretty good at skirting around people and squeezing in between people when I want a closer look (or a sample, though there were few samples and of those, most were Bergkäse (good, but fairly standard cheese in these parts). So the crowds weren't so much my issue with GW; it's just that it was boring (and I am someone who can spend hours in the grocery store)...(You can read a good condemnation of GW here.)I pretty much walked the entire length of GW and my favorite things were: Finnish powdered dried blueberries sprinkled on yogurt (In my head I made a coffee/pound cake with a dried blueberry swirl using this stuff, but it was crazy expensive and I am probably capable of grinding my own dried fruit if I could get it dry enough). They also had dried broccoli and powdered dried broccoli, which I did not sample, but find much less intriguing.) The other good sample was a candied cranberry...which is a somewhat sad commentary on the quality of the festival. I do need to tell you about my favorite product (for sale, 1 euro): an apple from Arnold Schwarzenegger's hometown. I must admit to regretting not buying this product, but in my defense some Austrians were trying to sell me wine and the Austrian accent is really hard for some of us to understand (although it sounds very North Dakota in its way). If you're too lazy to click on the link above, know that: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger explicitly and voluntarily supports the initiative to revalue and upgrade the image of the apple to a successful and healthy premium product."
But now for the really appalling part: I don't know how any visiting Canadians felt about the 2 Canada stands selling pancakes with maple syrup (Sidenote: Germans, at least some, eat pancakes for dinner (Kaiserschmarn), not breakfast, but not usually with syrup) and whiskey, but I can tell you how one American felt about the single US stand: American Ice Cream, selling softserve and milk shakes.
I was so appalled by this stand, which unlike the big Finland area, which was surely sponsored by someone somehow connected to the Finnish government, or at least Finland, clearly has no legitimate connections to the United States. Maybe I'm a little sensitive because I've had to defend/explain American food a few to many times in the couple years, but the point is that I was so appalled, I looked into the matter. According to the GW website, Jörg Lackas of American Ice-Cream by Lackys Waffeln Inh. is behind this stand. Now, I know that Americans come in all shapes and sizes and names, but don't see too many umlauts (those dots above the o in Jörg) in the US, now do you? And it's not that Americans don't eat softserve or milkshakes. I probably ate more than my fair share of softserve's cousin "fro-yo" in college and I know the US gets more than it's share of attention in other arenas like the UN, which one might argue is a bigger deal than GW, but still. Is this really the best representation of American food? And seriously, who goes around to international food festivals pretending to sell American ice cream? Or selling pretend American ice cream? And why hasn't the US government looked into this serious issue of cultural impersonation. Not to mention the gramatical errors on the signage (probably not visible in the photo, but really!).
(Thanks to Allison for teaching me how to get images off the internet, now I can decorate my blog even when I forget my camera!)
Anyway, the big food event of the week was Grüne Woche.
This is a ginormous "exhibition for the Food Industry, Agriculture and Horticulture" that takes place annually in Berlin. (Have you ever seen a sillier ad for such an event? It's as if this woman has never seen food before.) Anyway, we went on Tuesday after 3 pm and expected not too much a crowd. We were wrong. It was as if all of Berlin's senior citizens had been picked up and deposited in the massive convention center. Really, you could hardly move, but I'm not much of a crowd-phobic person and having lived in some places with a lot of people, I'm pretty good at skirting around people and squeezing in between people when I want a closer look (or a sample, though there were few samples and of those, most were Bergkäse (good, but fairly standard cheese in these parts). So the crowds weren't so much my issue with GW; it's just that it was boring (and I am someone who can spend hours in the grocery store)...(You can read a good condemnation of GW here.)I pretty much walked the entire length of GW and my favorite things were: Finnish powdered dried blueberries sprinkled on yogurt (In my head I made a coffee/pound cake with a dried blueberry swirl using this stuff, but it was crazy expensive and I am probably capable of grinding my own dried fruit if I could get it dry enough). They also had dried broccoli and powdered dried broccoli, which I did not sample, but find much less intriguing.) The other good sample was a candied cranberry...which is a somewhat sad commentary on the quality of the festival. I do need to tell you about my favorite product (for sale, 1 euro): an apple from Arnold Schwarzenegger's hometown. I must admit to regretting not buying this product, but in my defense some Austrians were trying to sell me wine and the Austrian accent is really hard for some of us to understand (although it sounds very North Dakota in its way). If you're too lazy to click on the link above, know that: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger explicitly and voluntarily supports the initiative to revalue and upgrade the image of the apple to a successful and healthy premium product."But now for the really appalling part: I don't know how any visiting Canadians felt about the 2 Canada stands selling pancakes with maple syrup (Sidenote: Germans, at least some, eat pancakes for dinner (Kaiserschmarn), not breakfast, but not usually with syrup) and whiskey, but I can tell you how one American felt about the single US stand: American Ice Cream, selling softserve and milk shakes.
I was so appalled by this stand, which unlike the big Finland area, which was surely sponsored by someone somehow connected to the Finnish government, or at least Finland, clearly has no legitimate connections to the United States. Maybe I'm a little sensitive because I've had to defend/explain American food a few to many times in the couple years, but the point is that I was so appalled, I looked into the matter. According to the GW website, Jörg Lackas of American Ice-Cream by Lackys Waffeln Inh. is behind this stand. Now, I know that Americans come in all shapes and sizes and names, but don't see too many umlauts (those dots above the o in Jörg) in the US, now do you? And it's not that Americans don't eat softserve or milkshakes. I probably ate more than my fair share of softserve's cousin "fro-yo" in college and I know the US gets more than it's share of attention in other arenas like the UN, which one might argue is a bigger deal than GW, but still. Is this really the best representation of American food? And seriously, who goes around to international food festivals pretending to sell American ice cream? Or selling pretend American ice cream? And why hasn't the US government looked into this serious issue of cultural impersonation. Not to mention the gramatical errors on the signage (probably not visible in the photo, but really!).(Thanks to Allison for teaching me how to get images off the internet, now I can decorate my blog even when I forget my camera!)
Monday, January 21, 2008
Grub (noch mal!)
While I continue to be frustrated from time to time by the food situation/scene in Berlin (today's frustration was my inability to find Lapsang souchong tea, though this may have more to do with my looking in the wrong place and not being much of a tea expert), I am still making new discoveries (one of the stands at my Friday market actually sells food that they grow on their farm...) and remembering that sometimes, if you want something, you have to make it happen. Thus, Berlin Reified and I decided to throw another Grub potluck (again, in the tradition of my Psister's Berkeley Grubs). As most everyone is recently back from the holidays (whether that meant a subway ride across town or 3 airplanes), our theme for the evening was Cook Something from Home, "home" of course, was subject to interpretation. While the first Grub was a lot of fun, we were a little frustrated that too many people didn't cook but brought cheese (sorry, Diana, but it is a cooking party) and the cheapest beer that isn't embarrassing. So, this time, we kindly but sternly forbade people from bringing cheese (not that I didn't manage to make a delicious mac and cheese out of the many, many bits of mystery cheese left at the end of the night) and mass produced beer. We may have weeded out a few people, but we were quite pleased with the spread. Home may be particularly difficult for temporary/permanent expats to define (though we had many "real" Germans in attendence) and for Americans (among others) "home food" can seem pretty international ... we had a lot of Asian-ish food (Vietnamese springrolls from San Francisco, sushi from a German who had lived in Japan and California rolls from a Californian, an invented Korean tofu dish from a Korean-German, an Indonesian noodle thing from a half-Dutch woman, and Chicken Yakitori from an Australian who also lived in Japan). Latin America/the Southwest wasn't so well represented, but I did my part with my grandmother's (Tucson) Green Corn Tamales made with local Schmalz and German Bergkäse. We promised ourselves we were going to take pictures, but it didn't happen once again...GrubBerlin will come back to life in March and I promise to try harder...(though I hope you are all impressed with my newfound linking skills).
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Weihnachten in die Wüste
When I planned it, three weeks in Tucson (where the fam' converged upon my grandfather's desert home) seemed like ages, but it (as vacations do) flew by. We ate a lot (though it's never enough) of Sonoran-style (ie, local/Tucson) Mexican food: thin placemat-size flour tortillas, green corn and red (chile pork) tamales, stacked enchiladas (mild cheese, no meat), carne seca (theoretically air-dried beef rehydrated with tomatoes and chiles), and other delights you just can't find in Berlin. Other food highlights included double birthday chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake, locally sourced (by meine Schwester) Christmas leg of lamb, Christmas Indian pudding (one of several "authentic" American culinary experiences for mein Freund (others: pimento cheese, ham biscuits, pecan pie...)) with homemade maple ice cream (yum, if i do say so myself), a New Years Eve Thanksgiving dinner (pecans (for the pie) gathered from our old family farm and painstakingly shelled by my grandfather), a New Years Day mesquite (gathered in the backyard (of sorts))-grilled steak cookout...
Lest you think we spent the entire time in the kitchen/dining room, non-culinary highlights included: several hikes (two in "our" canyon), a family roadtrip complete with not one, but two dogs, to see old family sights in New Mexico (the dogs liked the stop at White Sands best), some people (not me) visited a lot of airplanes (Tucson is home to a lot of "dead" airplanes), stargazing/sunset-viewing from Kitt Peak/our deck, the sustainable Christmas saguaro, and mingling with the unpaid retirees who make up the staff of the hot air balloon company (mein Freund got a ride for Weihnachten),and being cornered by a herd of javelina (wild boars of sorts)...After a few days in DC (Banh Mi and pupusas revueltas)I´m back to Berlin (stash of not-so-accessible-in-Berlin ingredients replenished: chocolate chips, canned green chile, etc.). After almost five weeks stateside, mein Deutsch is feeling pretty sad and after Tucson and unseasonably warm DC, the lack of central heat a little harsh, but for the most part, it´s good to be back.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Neu York, Neu York
For for my few and far between non-NYC-based readers, there were many highlights to my time in New York (madly finishing my NYU masters thesis, having my gloves stolen by an evil cabbie, and the Moishe's poppyseed hamantashan (hardly any filling!) excluded):
1. Lunch at Google: You've heard about the quirkiness of the Google offices and it's all true: scooters in the halls, free snacks and espresso machines everywhere (I pilfered my share!), and a sprawling (by Manhattan standards cafeteria with about a million choices and a cookbook author signing books and doing a cocoa-crusted scallop tasting.
2. A totally unBerlin evening, beginning with (as Anne called it) "grownup cocktails" at Pegu (even a simple vodka tonic gets me funny looks in Berlin) and dinner at Momofuko Ssambar (Japanese custard with maple and trout roe, roasted brussels sprouts with mint, pickled chiles(?), and fish sauce, steamed pork belly buns, pork short ribs with miso or ???, and a PB&J-inspired dessert of concord grape jelly, crunchy peanut butter, and saltine ice cream).
3. A meal with Diana at Prune has become a tradition when I visit New York. I know not everybody gets it, but Prune's food is perfectly in tune with me. Maybe next time I'll be able to branch out from the fried oyster omelet (served with remoulade and a brilliant sauce of powdered sugar mixed with tobasco). We were also harrassed (again!) by drunken Santas taking part in the annual Santa Con pub crawl (Berlin is much too serious for anything so silly) and went to a Christmas party at Sotheby's with a viewing of the purchasable Magna Carta.
4. The marinated white anchovy sandwich at 'wichcraft (with a soft-cooked egg, roasted onion, and salsa verde), which earned me a free sandwich (it's only taken me four years to earn this with my "frequent customer card"). I spend most of an entire day in 'wichcraft -- they have good snacks and coffee and surprisingly decent music to drown out the NYU undergrad's insipid conversations and free wireless.
5. Lunch as study break at the Jackson Diner (lunch buffet!) and for my last hurrah, pork and chive dumpling noodle soup on a cold night in Chinatown.
1. Lunch at Google: You've heard about the quirkiness of the Google offices and it's all true: scooters in the halls, free snacks and espresso machines everywhere (I pilfered my share!), and a sprawling (by Manhattan standards cafeteria with about a million choices and a cookbook author signing books and doing a cocoa-crusted scallop tasting.
2. A totally unBerlin evening, beginning with (as Anne called it) "grownup cocktails" at Pegu (even a simple vodka tonic gets me funny looks in Berlin) and dinner at Momofuko Ssambar (Japanese custard with maple and trout roe, roasted brussels sprouts with mint, pickled chiles(?), and fish sauce, steamed pork belly buns, pork short ribs with miso or ???, and a PB&J-inspired dessert of concord grape jelly, crunchy peanut butter, and saltine ice cream).
3. A meal with Diana at Prune has become a tradition when I visit New York. I know not everybody gets it, but Prune's food is perfectly in tune with me. Maybe next time I'll be able to branch out from the fried oyster omelet (served with remoulade and a brilliant sauce of powdered sugar mixed with tobasco). We were also harrassed (again!) by drunken Santas taking part in the annual Santa Con pub crawl (Berlin is much too serious for anything so silly) and went to a Christmas party at Sotheby's with a viewing of the purchasable Magna Carta.
4. The marinated white anchovy sandwich at 'wichcraft (with a soft-cooked egg, roasted onion, and salsa verde), which earned me a free sandwich (it's only taken me four years to earn this with my "frequent customer card"). I spend most of an entire day in 'wichcraft -- they have good snacks and coffee and surprisingly decent music to drown out the NYU undergrad's insipid conversations and free wireless.
5. Lunch as study break at the Jackson Diner (lunch buffet!) and for my last hurrah, pork and chive dumpling noodle soup on a cold night in Chinatown.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Frohe Weihnachten
Christmas in Germany is still a bit of a mystery to me and I'm going stateside in a few days so I won't be able to report on most of it first-hand, but I can tell you that the madness starts on the first day of Advent (December 2 this year), which is also when the Weihnachtsmaerkte (Christmas markets) get going. I'm currently in a bit of a German Christmas flurry as I have to soak it all up in less than a week (ie, buy meaningful, typical, and this year sustainable (the fam is doing a sustainable (except for the massive amount of airmiles on my and mein Freund's parts) Christmas) presents). I was pretty revved up for the Weihnachtsmaerkte. You always see such great photos in travel magazines...all winter wondery and overflowing with holiday cheer. In my experience, the Berlin version is more cold, grey, and drizzly than winter wondery, but it was still pretty cheerful. I managed to visit four markets this year so I have definitely had my share of cold toes and Gluhwein (literally, glowing wine, as in mulled wine): very important for the toes. The first market was at Domaene Dahlem in west Berlin and was possibly my favorite, if only because I got my share of Weihnachtsgans mit Gruenkohl und Kartofeln (Christmas goose with kale and potatoes) 
(and a bite of Hefekloesse mit Plaumenmus (yeasted dumpling with plumbutter!), pictured in the background). I also scored these delightful wooden animals ... very overdue baby gifts for some new tiny cousins I've acquired. 
Another Christmas highlight was this insanely cute Advent calendar (Adventkalendars are huge here) that mein Freund made for me!
I have a feeling Saint Nikolaus is going to really fill his (ugly German hiking) shoes this year! This is another German (and other Christian-y places, I think) tradition....Saint Nikolaus (think Santa in a pope hat) goes around and puts little treats in the shoes of good kids (and Freunds). From what I've read (thank you, Gridskipper), he has a not-so-nice acomplice, Knecht Rubrecht who deals with the naughty kids by leaving switches instead of treats. Like I said, I don't quite get this German Christmas thing (they also have two Christmases: the 25th and 26th even though the main celebration is on the 24th???). Not that I, equal opportunity celebrist that I am, fault anyone for too much celebrating ... we'll be having latkes (called Kartofelpuffer here and are not considered a Jewish food in the slightest, but are served year-round at street festivals and such) for our Hannukah dinner on the 4th.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Botschafting
My patriotic activity for the week was a formal, sit-down three-course plus hors d'Ouevres dinner for 14 for some people affiliated with the US Embassy: walnut toasts with blue cheese and fig preserves, ham biscuits, herb-marinated salmon over warm beluga lentil salad, Provencal lamb shanks with garlic mashed potatoes and haricot verts, and mini apple galettes with cardamom-spiced creme fraiche. I am insane, so of course I did this without an assistant and seriously undercharged (Sidenote: I am much too uncomfortable asking for money to free-lance. I seriously think I would do better in a bartering society. Alas....). Even though I felt there were several major things that I c/should have done better, now that the event is a few days behind me, I am feeling pretty OK about it. The first time working for a new client is always the hardest by a lot -- you spend so much time and effort just trying to situate yourself in their kitchen, figure out how their stove works, etc. Luckily, these people have a massive kitchen with an obscene (by Berlin standards) amount of refrigerator-freezer space and three (!) ovens (warm plates!). They also hired two Chileans as waiters, which was great, though linguistically really bizarre. It takes me 15 minutes to find my Spanish during which time I produce an interesting mix of the two plus the ocassional Portuguese and Catalan word. Once I locate the Spanish, it´s fine, but then I am unable to speak to the housekeeper (or anyone else for that matter) in German and it takes me about 24 hours to get back to the Deutsch. The point is, these guys were amazing and essential to the success of this gig. They stalled gracefully when I needed it by refilling wine glasses and brought me the bosses' clean plates to prove that all was not a disaster. I was crazy tired at the end of the night and everything still hurts (mashed potato disaster really did in my upper extremities)...but the clients were really pleased (even claiming that a former Inn at Little Washington chef had praised the food). I´m not so sure, but they have already booked me again for next week, so I suppose all´s well that ends well.
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