Bloody Germans

  Toppings, Sauces and Fillings

However, although the Germans stockpile a far greater amount of wonderful added extras and ingredients than us Brits, they do tend to overdo everything with their mixtures and fillings. I once tried to buy a simple beef burger at an Imbiss and quickly observed the numerous amount of plastic containers that lay on the multiple shelves behind the counter. They were all filled with an assortment of ingredients that unveiled just about every tone of colour that is in existence.

I said to the female assistant; quite simply and carefully..,

“I just want a bread roll, cut in half with the beef burger sat gently on the bottom half -- and the top half, fixed firmly over the top of it -- and I don’t mind at all, if I have to pay extra for the top half!”

I distinctively told her, “I don’t want anything else put inside my beef burger!”

“Kein Ketchup?’” She bewilderingly said, as she poked her big scoop at the number one container.

“Nein., No Ketchup!”

“Mustard?” The scoop began to travel down the line.

“Nein, no mustard -- just a plain old simple beef burger between the two half pieces of a roll!”

She just couldn’t believe her own ears -- so she moved her big scoop up one shelf-level and continued..,

“Gherkins?”

“NEIN!!!”

“Kein Salad, tomato, dried onions, mayonnaise…,”  Her scoop was by now getting frantic and began to make noisy contact with the top of each container..,

“Not even this funny looking green gooey stuff that I haven’t yet worked out what it is?”

“Nein, Nein, Nein und NEIN!!”

I had to quickly grab that beefy, pay for it, then make for the exit door -- down the road, turn a few corners; left and right. I had these horrible images in my head that she and her staff would be chasing after me with shovelfuls of assorted fillings and mixtures!

 Unavailable Products

In Germany, there is a long list of ‘things’ I can obtain and many other ‘things’ that I cannot. There is also an abundance of other ‘things’ I could quite easily lay my hands on -- but wouldn’t wanna touch with a quadrupled sized barge pole.

Let’s take a simple ‘thing’ like a tea-bag.

I have no problem whatsoever with my tea-bags back in UK. Within British supermarkets, there is a medley of brands that stretch out before me in a delirious variety of strengths and flavours; simply aisles-full of the stuff. In Germany, they may have an equal quantity of assortment, but one of their labels possesses a dark brownish complexion; a type that is moderately close to what we all know and have come to love so much in Great Britain -- but the rest is just a mountainous hotchpotch persuasion of greens, oranges, blues, reds, purples -- you name it, otherwise coloured and incontestably alien flavoured tea.

Even so, no matter what my fancy may be in the colour department with whatever pack I decide to select -- I can only pick up a one little box affair that is more or less half the size of a box of ‘After Eight’s’ mint chocolates, and contains only two rows of titchy little tea-bags that all come dangly at the end of a silly piece of string. The one brand that challenges closest to my palette; spunkily named ‘English Breakfast Tea’, is one that I just pop into my tea mug, add boiling water and then go off on holiday for six months. When I return, the tea from the tea-leaves should have by then hopefully drained long enough to give me something that closely resembles the colour that real tea should look like.

The Germans just don’t understand our love for tea and laughingly call it ‘boiled milky water’. With the experience of their own brands of tea-bag quality, it is quite easy for me to understand just how easily they came to that!

Not many English food products find their way into the German food chain. I never see a jar of delicious crunchy pickled onions or a decent packet of ‘Walkers’ or ‘Smith’s’ type crisps. The German crisps are mainly strong and spicy -- so even in that, they have overdone it again. And if I pop into an Imbiss and ask for a portion of fried chips -- I get skinny looking things that they so affectionately call Pomme-frites. They look like chips, but I’d better look quickly,  because when they ask me if I want some ketchup over them and I once again foolishly say --

“Yes please!”

They’ll bury my chips with half a ton of this dark red stuff, which isn’t the ketchup my Mother used to buy, but a German ketchup that’s hot n’ spicy to the ceiling. They lovingly call that stuff ‘Curry Sauce’, but it’s not really -- it’s just red sauce with tons of curry powder thrown in. They hide this important fact from me by just calling it ketchup, and once that lot’s been dolloped over my chips; ‘till I’m standing up in it -- I soon have my memory erased of what fried chips used to taste like.

I don’t find many English sweets or chocolates out here in Germany and the Germans cannot make toffees for a toffee either. No hard bits for Granny with her false teeth to worry about.

 German toffees are so soft and doughy, it’s like eating a highly sweetened ‘Oxo’ cube. But what depresses me even more within this disheartening area, is the dreaded absence of those lovely boxes of ‘Black Magic’ or ‘Cadbury’s Milk Tray’. All boxes of chocolates out here look and taste the same to me and they are all just so extravagantly sickly. It’s the very same with their chocolate bars -- the many different brands that I can so easily come by in England, I cannot find anywhere out here. That is, except maybe for a ‘Bounty’ bar, a ‘Kit-kat’ and perhaps at a push, one other -- but that’s the only choice or ration out here where the English chocolate bar selection is concerned --

 So tell me somebody -- what happened to the Common Market? 

Sometimes, if I am very lucky and have done my research well, I might come up with a bar of ‘Cadbury’s Fruit n’ Nut’, and if I am really lucky, I may stumble across a small box of ‘Quality Street’. But I don’t want to raise anybody's hopes too high with that last one.

But alas, they most definitely do not sell ‘Fry’s Turkish Delight’ in Germany; and that is my favourite -- and I’d sure kill for one right now!

Biscuits and Cakes

As I informed you earlier, for the Germans -- all forms of preparation, cooking and eating must be quick and simple.

Take our typical British Christmas cake for instance. No way would the Germans ever dream of going through that much palaver as we seem to enjoy each and every year. Their Christmas cake; like everything else, is also very simplistic. It’s just a large bread roll with added currents and sugar, then finished off with white dust scattered all over the top of it. And because it’s Christmas, this time they will kindly leave the lid on as a special treat for us.

 

Stollen, is what the Germans call their Christmas cake.

It’s the same with their biscuits and other persuasions of cake. The very wide range of English style biscuits and cakes are also a ‘thing’ that I miss very much out here in Germany. Unlike Britain; with its many supermarket aisles that contain a wide selection of both, the Germans seem to have only two choices within either --

With biscuits, they will arrive chock-full of chocolate or contain absolutely nothing. Plus I might add, I have yet to find a decent German biscuit that I can dip in my tea without it instantly falling apart. How I miss having a good old dunk!

With their cakes, they have quite similar to their alternative option in biscuits. However, although one kind will be just as equally boringly full of nothing, a wide assortment of others will frog-march up to my plate jam-packed with jam, choc-a-bloc with chocolate or crammed to the hilt with cream. Most times, the more voluminous flavoured versions will contain all three substances squirted in together.

My preference, in all their rich variety, is usually for neither. This is because, as with their mustard, mayonnaise and just about everything else they add or enclose to an edible object, they again, do tend to rather overdo it. They cram them solid with far too much chocolate, jam or cream, and should I ever risk eating one of their over-packed with jam Berliner’s (which is a doughnut to us), I would never dare consume it out in the streets. Somebody would soon phone for an ambulance because I’d finish up looking like I’ve just been mugged or run over by a truck!

Fortunately for me, I don’t posses a sweet tooth as many Germans appear to have, so my only other choice of biscuit or cake would be to have the options with nothing of interest added inside at all. But the taste of those kinds are so bland and boring, I think the recipe must have arisen from the bleak days of the Berlin Airlift.

My Mother’s Treacle Porridge

Thoughts of ‘Unavailable Products’ takes me back to the days when I was a child. I am easily reminded of one such ‘inventive’ product in which I am so thrilled it is not around for me today.

My parents at that time were not all that well off, so even sugar was a real luxury for us back then. My Mother used to give us three kids porridge every morning; just to fill us up -- but instead of putting on a nice thin layer of coated sugar over the top of it -- she would instead mix in a pinch or two of salt.

Her lame excuse used to be --

“Stop moaning -- that’s how the Scotsmen eat it!"

I thought, “It’s no wonder they go around looking so bloody aggressive!"

But one morning, my Mother put some black treacle on the top of our porridge; she must have run out of salt.

When I complained, she declared -

-

“Mix it in -- and it’ll taste just like sugar; you won’t be able to tell the difference!”

Well, mix it in is what I did -- and it just made it look like I was eating mud for my breakfast.

I seem to remember my two brothers having no problems themselves eating that ghastly looking muck, but then, my brother Dave would eat just about anything in those days. But me., I just couldn’t eat one tiny morsel of it at all; it was so yucky ‘orrible and about the worst thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. Which was pretty grim for someone who had only been around for about eight or nine years!

My Mother said --

“If  you don’t eat your breakfast -- you’ll get it back again for dinner!”

Why were parents so savage in those days?

I blame the war!

I whinged out in my despair, “Why can’t I have some sugar?”

“I’ll give you bloody sugar in a minute!” She hollered back at me..,

“Oh goody! Thanks very much”  I quickly retorted (prior to getting a clip round the ear).

Well sure enough, my Mother was true to her word. That very evening, while the rest of the family sat down at the table to eat a nice piping hot dinner of scrumptious pigs trotters and boiled to death cabbage (you see, I told you we was poor) -- out came my old cold lumpy muddy; now-gone-solid, downhearted treacle’d porridge. I could still see the little hole in the middle where I had aimlessly whirled my dispirited spoon around that woeful morning ---

“If you don’t eat it now -- you’ll get it again tomorrow.., and the day after that until you do!”

My Mother bellowed out to me as she engendered the plate of cold brown lumpy substance to spin around on the table in front of me. But no matter how many times I had to face that cold dark mess, I could never put one molecule of it near my mouth. And I can still recall the smell of it today. I thought then that the only way I could possibly escape the threat of this constant nightmare, would be to run away to sea or join up with the French Foreign Legion. Anything -- just to get away from that ‘orrible cold  treacle porridge.

That was a good forty or so years ago -- and I think am nonetheless damaged from it all today.

I still tremble whenever I go back home and call upon my Mother. I feel sure that porridge is still waiting for me back there today -- lying sturdy but lifeless, in a cold larder -- and getting darker and darker each passing day.

Yuk!