German slang has a funny word for all those trinkets whose sole purpose seems to be to accumulate dust: Staubfänger (literally “dust catchers”). While we have a bunch of those around our house (who doesn’t?), only a few give away my German background. I do not collect beer steins or Hummel figurines, nor I do not have a cuckoo clock. Continue reading
If Karen from German Girl in America, whom I featured in a recent blog post, did not live at the other end of the country, I would have certainly invited her to our kitchen table and listened to her story over a German meal. She and I share the love for German food and the belief that food and personal memories are inseparable and intricately tied together. Family history becomes tangible when we use our mother’s apron and our grandmother’s recipes. Continue reading
If there is one thing that has always been associated with junk food in Germany, it’s sweet woodruff (Waldmeister). There is sweet woodruff-flavored Jell-O, hard candy, soda, and Italian ice, all of them a neon-green color.
Jell-O is also called Götterspeise in German, „Food for the gods.“ And that’s what it felt to me as a kid: heavenly yet rather unreachable. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 