This is a feeling that you can’t and don’t just give up forever just because you are living in another culture and even consider yourself “integrated”. It still is after being here a long time, but even if I do like schnitzel, “home” is ham for Christmas. When you are new in a country, the exotic is interesting at first. Yet it still surprises and frustrates me – who would have thought it would be so hard to just get a ham or corned beef, something so seemingly typical? Of course they have different traditions and culinary options here (it’s no problem to get schnitzel or pork belly) and I have seen corned beef lunch meat at the store, so what about this one time when I just wanted something familiar? Takeaway: Laughing about stuff like this is all you can do since this kind of thing happens often enough. He was nice enough anyway, and said next time I can send him a picture and recipe of what I want on WhatsApp and he can make it for me! Had to laugh, but I thanked him, apologized, and left empty-handed. Turns out he actually had no idea what I wanted, even after I explained about it being a whole chunk of beef (“roast beef you mean?”, he says) marinated and pickled with spices. This is apparently the only kind of corned beef available here, pressed and sliced as lunch meat. It was a cube of something resembling corned beef, apparently corned beef chopped up, jellied, and formed into a cube to be sliced for lunch meat. Upon arrival and waiting in line (since it is a nice, country-style butcher), he happily brought out what I wanted and my heart sank. So I explained exactly what I wanted to the butcher over the phone today, pre-ordering as I was prompted to do back in December for any future specialty orders, and he said “sure! Will set it aside for you!” I thought pork was Germany’s main meat? I thought Germany is the land of meat? I mean, good luck trying to eat something typical German as a vegetarian! Even potato noodles or fried potatoes have bacon with or in them. After all that searching and convinced I had found the right meat. After 2 hours in the oven it was gray colored, so just a normal pork roast. I even scoured the area for butchers since the meat counter at the grocery store only had cooked ham in thin slices for lunch meat.Īfter finding a specialty butcher nearby and describing what I wanted to the lady behind the counter who recognized that I had an English accent and knew the cut I wanted, I brought home an uncooked ham roast for Christmas dinner, or so I thought it was. I already had trouble finding what we would consider a “normal Christmas ham” aka a cooked ham roast in December, despite the fact that I started looking for one several days in advance. Patrick’s Day dinner ready for tomorrow like I was planning to do, after having already gotten my husband excited about trying corned beef for the first time. Which will make it hard to have a traditional St. Which requires a few hours of prep and about 10 days to marinate it, according to Google.
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