Landjaeger
I never realized until very recently how much of a German influence I had growing up. Oma and Opa, my grandparents on my Dad's side, came to the US on a boat from Dresden in the 1920s. Somehow they made it to Milwaukee, along with all the other Germans who emigrated to the US at that time, and that's how my family ended up in Wisconsin. As a kid, we used lots of German words in our house, and I never thought anything of it. I just thought that's what things were called. The dog was a Hund, potatoes were Kartoffel, ham was Schinken, etc. We didn't mess with the der, die, das in those days. I had a great aunt whose name was Huntchen (yes, I'm serious), but we called her Tante (aunt in German) Huntchen and I never realized those were two separate words. I just thought the whole thing, Tantehuntchen, was a weird German name.
Opa was a pastry chef, and Oma was an amazing cook, so we ate well with them. Oma taught my Mom how to cook German food as well. I loved it all so much and of course now I'm kicking myself for never having the patience for letting my Oma or my Mom teach me how to make rouladen or sauerbraten or roast pork with sauerkraut or stuffed cabbage or dumplings.
We also regularly went to "the German butcher" to get meat and cheese. I don't know who this "German butcher" was, I just remember my Dad saying "I need to stop at the German butcher". I think he had a favorite place in both Madison and Milwaukee. After my Oma and Opa moved to Florida for the winters, my Dad would send them packages of goodies from "the German butcher". These packages included gross (my opinion, not theirs) sausages and meat spreads like Teewurst (I still don't know what that is), and something my Dad called "coarse met" which I think was short for Metwurst, both of which had the consistency of liver sausage. Her goody packages also included Stollen which I suppose my Dad got at the German bakery rather than the German butcher.
Even as recently as last year when I was caring for my Mom I would have to make special trips over to the Bavaria Sausage store on the other side of town to buy something for my Mom called Fleischkase. This is perhaps the grossest German meat of all. Technically, it could be translated into "meat cheese". It comes like a deli meat. I'm not sure what's in it, but it has the consistency of bologna. The sliced, pinkish kind that made by Oscar Meyer that went into the bologna sandwiches on white bread that some kids used to eat.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of German meats and sausages that I love (such as my beloved Wisconsin brat). My favorite German snack of all as a kid was Landjaeger. I had sort of forgotten about it until recently because I haven't eaten it in years. Just today I saw Ms. Mac's post which mentioned Landjaeger and I was reminded of how happy I am to have found a good Landjaeger recently at my new favorite store across the border in Germany. Landjaeger is a cold, smoked sausage stick. I guess it originally was popular with hunters and outdoorsmen because they could carry it around with them in the woods since it's smoked. I was trying to describe it to someone the other day and she asked me "Is it sort of like a Slim Jim?" Remember those? I guess it's sort of like that, but oh, so much better. These are the kinds of things I will miss when we go back to living in the States...
Opa was a pastry chef, and Oma was an amazing cook, so we ate well with them. Oma taught my Mom how to cook German food as well. I loved it all so much and of course now I'm kicking myself for never having the patience for letting my Oma or my Mom teach me how to make rouladen or sauerbraten or roast pork with sauerkraut or stuffed cabbage or dumplings.
We also regularly went to "the German butcher" to get meat and cheese. I don't know who this "German butcher" was, I just remember my Dad saying "I need to stop at the German butcher". I think he had a favorite place in both Madison and Milwaukee. After my Oma and Opa moved to Florida for the winters, my Dad would send them packages of goodies from "the German butcher". These packages included gross (my opinion, not theirs) sausages and meat spreads like Teewurst (I still don't know what that is), and something my Dad called "coarse met" which I think was short for Metwurst, both of which had the consistency of liver sausage. Her goody packages also included Stollen which I suppose my Dad got at the German bakery rather than the German butcher.
Even as recently as last year when I was caring for my Mom I would have to make special trips over to the Bavaria Sausage store on the other side of town to buy something for my Mom called Fleischkase. This is perhaps the grossest German meat of all. Technically, it could be translated into "meat cheese". It comes like a deli meat. I'm not sure what's in it, but it has the consistency of bologna. The sliced, pinkish kind that made by Oscar Meyer that went into the bologna sandwiches on white bread that some kids used to eat.
Don't get me wrong, there are lots of German meats and sausages that I love (such as my beloved Wisconsin brat). My favorite German snack of all as a kid was Landjaeger. I had sort of forgotten about it until recently because I haven't eaten it in years. Just today I saw Ms. Mac's post which mentioned Landjaeger and I was reminded of how happy I am to have found a good Landjaeger recently at my new favorite store across the border in Germany. Landjaeger is a cold, smoked sausage stick. I guess it originally was popular with hunters and outdoorsmen because they could carry it around with them in the woods since it's smoked. I was trying to describe it to someone the other day and she asked me "Is it sort of like a Slim Jim?" Remember those? I guess it's sort of like that, but oh, so much better. These are the kinds of things I will miss when we go back to living in the States...
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