Monday, October 7, 2019
Food. Ye Gods and little fishes . . . food!
Our annual Blogorado gathering is coming up next weekend, and Miss D. and I have volunteered to provide supper on Friday night. We therefore hit the road to Muenster, TX this morning, to Fischer's Meat Market, which I've mentioned in these pages before. It's a truly magnificent German-style meat market, which breeds its own cattle, slaughters them itself, and processes the meat to produce all sorts of delectable goodies.
We probably shocked the counter staff by ordering so much. Thirty-odd bratwurst, thirty-odd bockwurst, eight pounds of coarse-ground peasant-style Braunschweiger, twelve pounds of German potato salad (the kind you eat warm), six pounds of sauerkraut, several pounds of onion and smoked cheddar cheese, two pounds of German herbed mustard, a jar of dilled garlic cloves, a little of this, a little of that . . . The total came to just under two hundred and fifty dollars, which we gladly paid. This sort of quality simply can't be had for love or money except at a traditional German operation like this, and whilst we don't go to Fischer's often, when we do, we don't begrudge the money we spend.
The shopping's now been decanted into three separate fridges and freezers. Wednesday evening we'll put it all into a couple of cooler boxes, along with ice, and that should keep it safe until Friday afternoon, when we'll start cooking. This should be a meal to remember!
Peter
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15 comments:
Drooling over here... :-)
Ice? Ice? Peter, you need to try out freezer packs. They are expensive to buy but one can make them from used glass or plastic bottles filled with a mix of water and running alcohol. Stays cold longer than ice and no wet mess.
I would note that 250 bucks will buy you a nice dinner for two on either coast or most major cities in between. My German grandfather and Dutch/English grandmother would be proud of your efforts.
Their motto was "if you love them, feed them!"
Mmmmm, meat....
I've always been a bit put out that my German/Texas ancestors were not butchers. A German carpenter in Texas, even in the 1870s, does not have the same cachet.
Food, you call it? This is provenance of the sort found in the higher realms of pagans, the board presented to the Aesir and their chosen Vanir in Valhalla or tendered to Siegfried (lovingly prepared from Fafnir, in his own casings). In Heaven, these platters are delivered to the Saints by by welcoming choirs of Thrones and Powers, while the Cherubim sing hymns of praise and announce that Dinner is served. The Greek gods would willingly hurl their goblets of ambrosia into the sea, mount their chariots and speed like thunder to the north, merely to beg the German gods for any leftovers.
I expect the cryptic posting on all the blogs to be composed of short lower-case transmission such as "yummmm, uuuuurrrrr wurst yet to come, wo ist mein gewurtzzzzzzz...., great pistol but the potato salad is cooling, jaegerschnitzel tango, or similar messages of consumnated and conmingled satiation.
One can only hope that there is no "hey watch this" moment where a sausage is test-fired from a fixture-mounted 2-bore long arm. That is the wurst one can do to an unsuspecting target board.
(Apologies. For some moments here, I believe I have channeled Lawdog)
@Silent Draco:
One can only hope that there is no "hey watch this" moment where a sausage is test-fired from a fixture-mounted 2-bore long arm. That is the wurst one can do to an unsuspecting target board.
No. Sausage wouldn't be appropriate for that. One would shoot a jaegerschutzen instead.
:-)
For those of us who are a little out of range of Muenster,
is the real deal, even for us schlesich/saarlaender offshoots.
.
glueck auf!
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https://www.stiglmeier.com/
@John Cunningham - in many cases I'd agree with you, but in this case? Any freezer packs I have (and I do have them) would then have to be lugged back home with us. Ice can be dumped on site, and only an empty, dry cooler returned... quite possibly packed with other things that I found that will follow me home.
And if there's no room to fit the cooler after shopping, then it'll go with friends and I'll not have to worry about handing a mess of packs off to anyone else. Thus, they remain in the deep freezer, and ice it is.
Question: what's the difference between German potato salad and (for lack of a better term) American potato salad?
@Dave: In my experience (which is limited), American potato salad is heavy on the mayonnaise and doesn't have much in the way of herbs. It's eaten cold. German potato salad is cut smaller, has more herbs and oils in it (depending on the recipe one uses), and is heated (warm, not steaming hot) before eating. It has more of a savory flavor.
My mouth waters...
I should know better than to cross words with a certified (or certifiable?) Master Punner, but the channeling just came forth.
German potato salad, served warm and savory, is wonderful. A waitress once asked slowly and carefully if I knew what I ordered, but a simple "naturlich" took care of that.
For a similar experience if you are ever in Dallas anywhere near the SMU campus, Kuby's Sausage House and Old World Market offers a similar butcher shop experience, along with a nice restaurant. They also do wild game processing the Old World way. I was lucky enough to live within a couple of blocks of the place when I was in school, and our German language class went there to practice conversational German with the mostly German staff. I highly recommend it!
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