Warning: this post is about liverwurst and fish-for-breakfast.
Hallo aus Deutschland! I’ve been in north Germany for five days now, and have collected plenty of entries for today’s game:
Is it Delicious? Or Just Plain Nutritious?
How to play: Read through the list below, and decide for yourself! Author’s answers at bottom.
Breakfast
-Two kinds of liverwurst at Sunday’s breakfast buffet: light and dark. The light one tasted like liverwurst, the dark one tasted like liverwurst squared. Strong stuff!
-Small veal sausages served with chives and sweet mustard. Seems innocuous, but strict instructions were given that they are only to be eaten in pairs. (?!)
-Tiny sweet shrimps from the North Sea in creamy dill sauce with dark bread.
-Rhubarb/Vanilla yoghurt from the “bio” shop (I think bio means healthy? or organic?) where the lady running the shop was super friendly and helpful until the very end, when she realized that I hadn’t brought a grocery bag and had to use a disposable plastic bag. My face is still burning with shame.
-Seventy-five kinds of muesli, including one with dried kiwis! And one that was mostly walnuts! And one that looked like plain oats but was toasty and crunchy and tasted kind of warm!
-Another entry from the breakfast buffet: for putting on toast, a creamy spread that contained mandarin oranges, small pieces of onion, and either mushrooms or rabbit kidneys. This was not a translation problem, I just couldn’t tell if I was eating mushrooms or if I was eating rabbit kidneys.
-Smoked salmon, smoked sardines, smoked herring, basically smoked everyfish.
-Cold cuts, including a star-shaped slice of pork hunks suspended in clear-but-smoky-tasting aspic.
-Nutella in individual-serving-size containers that are perfect for slipping into your purse for later.
Dinner
-Four options for side items at last night’s dinner at a fish restaurant: potato salad, boiled potatoes with salt, french fries, and pan-fried potatoes with speck and onion.
-Canned corn on salad.
-Pickled cabbage on salad. This is lighter and a bit sweeter than sauerkraut, and can be green or red cabbage. It’s finely shredded, still a bit crunchy, and served next to a pretty pile of grated carrots.
-Amarena cherries from Italy served over dark chocolate ice cream.
-house-made pork schmaltz at a fancy restaurant in Hamburg to be eaten on toast with a sprinkle of salt.*
Snacks
-Currywurst! Sausage with curry sauce to be eaten with fries from a takeaway.
-Pickled herring sandwich on the wharf in Hamburg. I’d almost choked down the whole thing when dear sweet Tobias said, “Yes, I forgot to mention that sometimes these sandwiches can taste a bit scary.”
And the winner is…everything but canned corn and wharf-herring-sandwiches! Those taste bad in the same way – tangy and metallic. Everything else (including potatoes and mushroom/kidney surprise) tastes great!
*This clearly takes the award in the ‘Almost a Small Nod to Jewish People Having Been Here at Some Point Except That It’s Made with Pork So Not Really’ category.