Culinary Fun!

Dinner with Friends

We've talked about having the neighbors over for dinner all summer, but it was so rainy and cold in June and July that the traditional backyard barbeque wasn't much of an option. We finally had some free time and a weekend that looked promising, so we invited our next-door neighbors Steven and Angelina and across-the-street neighbors Jens and Stephanie over for some Texas BBQ. Nothing against the traditional Minnesota Potluck, we figured we'd save the Jello salad and green bean hotdish for another day :)

After a lot of debate, and input from our friends, we decided to serve a simple salad (the kind with crunchy ramen noodles and a sweet soy dressing), Texas caviar, BBQ smoked ribs, extreme baked beans, smoked brisket, scotcheroos, and apple pie. We also picked up some cream soda and grape soda (the grape was an experiment of sorts, since a German friend of ours declared that the idea of grape soda was disgusting). When I asked Stephanie if there's anything American she's always wanted to try, she said "marshmallows" so we included smores on the menu. Germans do have something akin to marshmallow, but I think it's usually inside of a candy or dessert and not a standalone thing. She compared it to something, but I don't remember the German word. The one exception we made for the dinner was the beer-- Tom was not going to make the Germans drink American beer, and so German brew was served. 

The ribs were a huge hit! Tom makes really good ribs, but if a German declares you've done well with pork then you know you're doing something right. The brisket went over pretty well too, though the preference seemed to be for the pork. It's no stereotype, Germans really, really love pork. I haven't seen ribs on a menu anywhere, though. It's usually sausage or patties or boneless cuts (schnitzel everywhere!) Angelina is a vegetarian, and she brought her own meatless sausage for Tom to grill. There were leftovers and I tried some later... German meatless sausage is not any better than the American kind, to my disappointment. Tom also made her a separate dish of beans, since he uses the drippings in the regular kind. She loved the beans and the green salad, and asked several times for the recipe for the Texas Caviar. The scotcheroos, which are like Rice Krispie bars with peanut butter and chocolate/butterscotch icing, were also very popular. Okay, I ate half the pan myself... but I think Stephanie put away most of the other half :) Stephanie asked for the recipe for that dish, and I did give it to her, but I don't know how many of the ingredients she'll be able to find. When they tried to understand "butterscotch" they translated it as caramel, which I said wasn't right, but I couldn't think of anything closer.

We taught them how to roast marshmallows, and the look on Stephanie's face when she caught her first marshmallow on fire was priceless! She also enjoyed the smores, though I don't know if the others tried them... at that point we were all feeling a little stuffed. We never made it to the apple pie! I think everyone agreed that goopy hot marshmallows are pretty good all by themselves! (Except me, because I don't like marshmallows.)

A Few Random Moments

In a random snippet of conversation, Wyatt was saying something about Tom and Jens drinking beer, and Jens told him, "All Germans love beer!" This is not technically true, since his wife doesn't like it. The other 80 million Germans do, though. Tom asked Jens when he first started drinking beer, since the legal age for beer is 14 if they are with their parents. Jens said he was 11. Germany has an interesting approach to alcohol, which is to teach responsible drinking rather than restricting it. And it's pretty successful, judging by the zillions of local and national festivals where people engage in widespread public drinking and are still perfectly normal citizens. The drinking atmosphere is very different here than in the States, and I don't like beer or wine (which is what they usually serve) but it's nice to go a wine festival in a public park and have it be a family event where people are dressed nicely, or go to schnappsfest with the kids and let them ride the carousel.

Just like we do at home, we put all the soda into the cooler with ice. Germans do not put ice in their beverages, and their soda only comes in bottles-- no cans. I don't know if they use coolers. They don't seem overly picky about whether drinks are cold or not, including the beer. But if they serve something in a bottle, they'll usually offer you a glass. I didn't think about it until I saw Stephanie and Angelina drinking out of the can, and then I offered them a glass. Angelina got the funniest look on her face, like a little kid doing something sneaky, and said, "it's really fun to drink out of the can because we don't have them!" They thought the cream soda was okay, and sure enough no one touched the grape soda. Mostly the Diet Coke was the soda of choice-- it's still different though, since here they drink Coke Light (which I think tastes better). 

Germans don't like peanut butter, and don't get why we eat so much of it. When you go to the grocery store, there is a giant wall of Nutella and maybe four jars on the bottom shelf of peanut butter, so it's the opposite of the American stores. I discovered that part of the problem is that the peanut butter they sell here is the natural, unsweetened kind. It's pretty much just a jar of grainy, smushed peanuts. Okay, Americans don't like that either! I bought Stephanie a jar of Skippy and she agreed that it was much better. I hope their little boy Simon, age 20 months, gets a few PBJs out of the deal :) I should pick up some corn dogs for him... I bet they'd be horrified. I don't think cornbread is a thing here... 

Stephanie had lots of zucchini growing in her garden and didn't know what to do with it all. I asked her if she ever made zucchini bread, and she said no. So I made her some to bring home, and she said she really liked it-- I guess she served it to her in-laws and they liked it too. She said it was more of what Germans would call a cake, but that she'd never thought of making it with zucchini before. (They don't have banana bread either, which reminds me I need to copy the recipe for that.)

The Return Invite

Last week I went over to Stephanie and Jens' house for dinner, which was flammkuchen, or a grilled flatbread pizza. Only instead of tomato sauce, they use quark, which is one of Germany's many dairy products that we do not have in America. I'd say it's the consistency of Greek yogurt, but it's more like a sour cream. I've tried quark with fruit in it, and it tastes like a slightly sour yogurt. Anyway, they use that as the sauce and put onions and bacon and stuff on it. Jens also made a dessert flammkuchen, still with quark but with sliced bananas and strawberries and cinnamon sugar on it. I ate so much flammkuchen I thought I might explode! I'm definitely going to have to add that to my dinner repertoire. 

Not the actual flammkuchen, which I demolished before
any camera could capture its image.

I finally brought them an apple pie, along with whipped cream in a can. Germans don't have pie quite like we do. Usually there's custard or something in there. As I guessed, they also don't have whipped cream in a can. At first they couldn't figure out how to operate the can, but once they did I instantly saw them grasp the extreme fun of making whipped cream poof out onto their fingers, desserts, forks, etc. Although I didn't see them put it directly into their mouths... I bet they did later. Everyone does.