Alles Gute zum Gerburtstag

To have one final post regarding food on my birthday, I wanted to mention my special Saturday morning breakfast. You can read more about it on my other blog, but my favorite German soccer club had a big game against their Bavarian rivals that morning. To get into the spirit of that game and to celebrate my birthday, I thought it would be nice to have a traditional German breakfast.

I’ve always had a thing for the German breakfast since going to Germany my first time in high school. I think I enjoy the simplicity and old world charm of their breakfasts. It probably helps too that I’m 98% of German background. Most of the time the breakfast just consists of brötchen (German hard rolls) eaten as an open faced sandwich with butter and then either meat, cheese, or jam. You may also have muesli with milk or yoghurt, as well as soft boiled eggs. Of course with the soft boiled eggs, you traditionally would cut off the top, place it in an egg cup, and eat the egg out with a tiny little egg spoon. Before you even ask, yes I do have a set of egg cups, egg spoons, and even have a sinister looking device that cuts the tops of the eggs.

Luckily, here in Madison there is a German butcher shop and grocery store on the west side of town. It is aptly named Bavaria Sausage and is owned and operated by one family. The original owners (the mother and father) opened the shop in the early 1960s. I’ve in fact seen the father still at the shop making sausages and other meat, and of course wearing the small traditional Bavarian hat complete with the feather on the side. Because of the family tradition, and the endless supply of incredible looking meat and cheese, Bavaria Sausage is one of my favorite places in Madison.

For my Saturday morning breakfast, I went to Bavaria Sausage on my Friday lunch break and picked up some of the essentials. I purchased brötchen, schinken (sometimes known as Black Forest ham, kind of a German prosciutto), hard salami, butterkäse (a white farmers style cheese), and this very dense full grain bread (here is an example). The last item is an item that I don’t really know the right name for, but you see it all the time in Germany. Its density though, does make it an acquired taste. In fact, on my second trip to German as part of a college trip, we received this bread as part of a sack lunch. I was the only person of our group that would eat it.

The brotchen come frozen and half baked so I popped those in the oven first thing that morning. While they were baking, and later cooling, I made my customary morning tea (the Germans do have that too) and lined up all of my other foods. Then with the brötchen cooled, I cut then in half and topped them with meat. I also had a slice of the dense bread, split in two and topped with butter and butterkäse. After two rounds of that, I was quite satiated and quite pleased.

Although, my soccer club didn’t win that Saturday morning, I had a good time making and enjoying my traditional German breakfast. And I didn’t even have to put on any lederhosen…

Round One: Clockwise - whole brötchen, brötchen halves with schinken, and dense bread with butterkäse

Round Two: brötchen halves topped with hard salami, dense bread with butterkäse

Moon Pies

One of my favorite pre-packaged treats is the Moon Pie. Most people wouldn’t readily admit that they enjoy a confection that is easily found at gas stations, but I love the darn things. If you’re not familiar with them, Moon Pies are a sandwich treat made up of two graham cracker like cake rounds with a marshmallow filling in between. The whole sandwich is then dipped in a flavoring, chocolate being the traditional variety. They’re mostly a Southern thing (being produced in Chattanooga, TN), so much so that they are traditionally enjoyed with an RC Cola.

Now how did I, growing up in Iowa become attached to Moon Pies? Oddly enough, I experienced my first one on a trip to Washington to visit my brother and sister-in-law in the summer of 2004. Why a Southern region’s confection made it to the Northwest is beyond me, but nonetheless nearly every gas station we visited on our travels had them. I had heard of them before the trip but had never had one, so I made sure to get every flavor I could – chocolate, banana, and vanilla. Chocolate and banana were the best of the three and to this day remain my favorites.

Fast forward to January 2011, where I traveled to South Carolina to visit my wife’s aunt and uncle. Of course, upon going to the grocery store I made a beeline straight for the snack food aisle and attempted to find Moon Pie Shangri –la. Unfortunately, once I found the Moon Pies (which indeed did take up a lot of real estate in the aisle) they were all out of the normal pies. They did however have Mini Moon Pies (which I bought to bring back for my coworkers) and double-decker Moon Pies (of which I got two boxes, chocolate and banana).

Of course, upon returning home from the trip, I rationed that supply very carefully, eating at most one Moon Pie a day. With that said, I still only made it maybe the middle of February. However a few weeks ago before my birthday, I received a package from my wife’s aunt. At first struggling to think of what she might have sent me, I eventually came to the exclamatory thought, “Oooh, I hope it’s just a big box of Moon Pies!” Sure enough, my wife’s aunt and I are on the same wavelength and it was a box full over two dozen Moon Pies, a dozen chocolate and one dozen banana.

I can’t quite explain why I like the darn things. I’ve always liked graham crackers, so that probably helps. I guess then adding marshmallow and a chocolate coating only sweetens the deal. The banana coating isn’t for everyone but I enjoy a good banana cream pie and it reminds me slightly of that. The banana flavor for the Moon Pies isn’t as fake as many other banana flavored foods either.

Since they may be foreign to some folks (and my descriptions can only go so far), you may still want to visit the Wikipedia article or the Moon Pie official website.

They may still seem strange, but the next time you see a Moon Pie in a gas station, convenience store, or a grocery store, take a pass on the Twinkie, Snickers, or Nutty Bars and grab yourself a Moon Pie instead.