What North Germans like to eat: Fischbrötchen

Blogging from A – Z

I don’t know an English word for my favorite snack: Fischbrötchen. In North Germany you will find stalls selling rolls (Brötchen) with  freshly fried, smoked or salted fish at any market, at the beach or in fish shops.

A fresh, crisp roll, a salad leaf, perhaps a bit of tartar sauce or mayonaise, heaps of mild onions, pickles,  and fresh fish – simply delicious and hardly any cholesterol (that matters as you get older, unfortunately). A great alternative to the famous German Bratwurst.

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My favorite Fischbrötchen is Matjesbrötchen, which you can see below. Matjes are the fillet of  herings, which have been salted in barrels over a time. The real Matjes, which you will get in late May/June are of herings that have not yet spawned. They are sort of melting in your mouth. Just imagine: sitting in the sun, inhaling sea air and biting into your Fischbrötchen – bliss!

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I was nominated for a blog award by ‘vickyandherdogs’ ( https://vickyandherdogs.wordpress.com) and thus being saved from thinking up something interesting for my blog this afternoon.

Thank you Vicky.

The nice thing about blog awards is that you have to answer questions about yourself, or, as with this award,  share some facts about yourself. Like most people I have some narcisstic traits, and love talking about myself.

So, here are 7 facts about myself:

  1. I would never get an award for being a good housewife. To start off with, I hate doing laundry. I feel it is the most tedious job possible, and I don’t like ironing either. I am glad we have some rooms in the cellar where I can hide all the unwashed towels and sheets and the piles of T.Shirts and stuff waiting to be ironed. There are some other things I loathe doing around the house, but I will not get into it, after all I want to make a nice impression on you.
  2. I don’t much like clothes shopping, even though I do like dressing well. I shop when I have to, but it wouldn’t occur to me to browse through department shops and boutiques just for fun. The sizes never seem right, and the mirrors in these changing cabins are merciless.
  3. I am a bugger for cosmetics. Creams and lotions and all things smelling good appeal to me. When I am late for work it is usually because I spent too much time in the bathroom, but then at least I am relaxed and feeling good. There is nothing wrong with looking after oneself, is there?
  4.  I find it impossible to resist good food. I love eating and enjoy trying new foods, either in ethnic restaurants or by trying out recipes. At the same time I like traditional food, especially cooked by my mother, and I like old cookbooks. It’s amazing how our daily food is influenced by fashions and trends.
  5. I have  a terribly spoiled terrier-mix thatis annoying the neighbors by barking at anyone passing by. The mailman and her have had rather unpleasant encounters and he refuses to enter the ground when she is outside. However, I love her and consider her my very best friend.
  6. Since my last birthday I am closer to sixty than to fifty, and I don’t mind at all. It is nice to have grown-up children. Also, I found, it is not that you stop having fun and enjoying life when you get older, it is just that you start liking and enjoying different things than at twenty or thirtyfive.
  7. I enjoy reading thrillers. I just finished the triology by Erik Axl Sund, and can recommend it for anyone who is able to take  storys with some very evil twists. Strangely enough these kind of novels seem to appeal to a lot of my colleagues, all of them being either psychologists, social workers or therapists. When talking about books during lunch break not so long ago, we found that most of us have been reading  thrillers with a lot of gruesome murders and other dreadful things occuring in them. I wonder whether it could be related to the kind of job we do? Warding of aggressive impulses, perhaps?

So, writing this definitely helped forgetting about the wet, cold, grey weather that is not inviting at all.

Thank you for reading this. And here are the rules for this award

A) Show the award on your blog.
B) Thank the person who nominated you.
C) Share seven facts about yourself.
D) Nominate 15 blogs
E) Link your nominee’s blogs & let them know.

Even though I follow many blogs, I find it difficult to nominate 15 writers, who have neither received this blog before and accept awards and are writing about many different ,  so there are only six links on my list.

Here are the nominees: 

https://aprilesutton.wordpress.com/

https://whazzupwasabi.wordpress.com/

https://debragirlintheworld.wordpress.com/

https://danceyourkarma.wordpress.com/

https://heartkindling.wordpress.com/

https://smallstepsalong.wordpress.com/

 

LIVER. IL FEGATO. LE FOIE. EL HÍGADO. LEVERN.

 

   LIVER. IL FEGATO. LE FOIE. EL HÍGADO. LEVERN.    

When I was a child we had cow’s liver at least once a week. It was a very common (and cheap) food. We always had it with mashed potatoes and loads of fried onions and fried apple slices. I liked my liver just slightly rare in the middle, so that it would be soft and juicy. That was during the late 60ies and early 70ies. Like all things, food is subjected to fashion and in the early seventies chicken liver became the thing to eat. It was fried together with onions, garlic, red and green peppers and then left to stew in Sherry. It was served with white rice.

What you eat reflects your attitude and lifestyle, doesn’t it? When I became a young mother  I turned health conscious and experimented with vegetarian food, and whole food, followed by a phase of Asian cooking.  At the same time we had many food scares in Germany, the worst perhaps the fear of BSE or cow madness, and liver disappeared from the shops.

During the last months I have now and then seen liver at the butcher’s, but still, I feel uneasy about buying it. Liver is food of another era,  the same era in which we considered cow’s tongue in white wine sauce (almost free of fat and very tender meat), a delicacy, had whipped egg with sugar as a sweet and thought nothing of eating ‘Bregenwurst’, a sausage, that at that time  still contained  some brain of pigs.