Ah... the food

Just a couple of gastronomic notes …
One day while we were out and about, we stopped at a pizza place. Pizza’s pretty easy to order, although most Italian places have a menu that is a linguistic hodge-podge of German and Italian. The Italian words are easy to recognize, and I think I’ve got the German down. So I find a pizza that has meat sauce, which sounds good. It also lists one other topping – Erbsen – which I haven’t seen. But I figure, it goes on pizza, I’m sure it’ll be fine, right? “Pizza mit Bolognese und erbsen, bitte.”

So, I’m pretty hungry, waiting, and it finally comes out. Erbsen is peas – the kind we refer to as English peas or Sweet peas. And, God bless her, she has been generous with them. Every centimeter (yes, I said “centimeter.” Finally letting that metric system soak in.) of the pizza is covered with peas. I should mention, I do not like peas. And here I sit, really hungry, in front of a pea pizza. Like Mom says, “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.” I did eat a pretty good bit of it. But my stomach didn’t know what to make of it. The universe was askew (Ok, maybe it takes a bit more than that to skew the universe, but its weird, right?)

Another pizza note … we went to a Pizza Hut soon after we moved here, and the kids were pretty excited that they had stuffed-crust pizza. The waitress asked what kind of dipping sauce we wanted. Here were the choices – Mayo, Curry, Barbeque, or Ketchup. Huh? How about some of that stuff you put on the pizza? We looked confused, and I started to ask, “Do you have…” She interrupted me with, “Marinara?” So they are familiar with the concept. Basically this Pizza Hut is near the base, and they must always have Americans ask for Marinara, so she saw it coming the minute we sat down. But they won’t commit to our crazy ideas enough to put it on the menu.

Speaking of sauce - I’ve gotten over my initial dislike of sauce. Remember when we first got here and I complained that they put gravy on everything? It was thick, too. But since then I’ve had a krauter sauce (which just means herb sauce, telling me nothing about what might be in it. So I can’t re-create it at home and pour this velvety, liquid heaven on everything I eat) on salmon, Jager (German for Hunter) sauce and mushroom sauce on putenschnitzel and some very good, light salad dressings.

Now if I see Jager sauce listed, my only concern is if there will be enough on my plate to also dip my fries in (fries come with everything. It is a great country). Then there’s the vanilla sauce you can get on waffles. There are fresh waffle stands all around – parks, malls, furniture stores (seriously, there is really good eating in the furniture stores. The longer they get you to stay, the more furniture you’ll buy, I think). You can get a waffle with all sorts of toppings. I just want a big ladle of creamy vanilla sauce.

So here’s the new me …Do I want sauce with that? What am I, an animal? Of course I want sauce!