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
In early February, the week of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to the White House, The Economist ran an article about German-Americans entitled “The Silent Minority”. German immigrants, America’s largest ethnic group, “flavoured American culture like cinnamon in an Apfelkuchen”, the article said, yet they quietly assimilated and, because of the two World Wars and the Holocaust, tended to hide their origins rather than claim and openly display their heritage. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 