Category: food and drink.

Scrapple is a great example of a polarizing food—people either love it or think it’s abominable.

I happen to love it because it’s substantially similar to Panhas, a traditional Westphalian food that was one of my comfort dishes growing up. (The recipe for Panhas was imported by German immigrants, which is why it’s mostly made and eaten in and around Pennsylvania and parts of the mid-Atlantic region.)

Panhas and scrapple used to make use of the broth and pig parts left over after pig-butchering and sausage-making. The ingredients, preparation, and flavor place scrapple and Panhas (and their close cousin, the Dutch Balkenbrij) in the black pudding family.

Slice it, fry it up, serve it with eggs and bread. Now you, too, can eat like a 17th century Westphalian peasant!

All right, the All Dressed potato chip flavor is pretty damn good. I stocked up in Canada, and today I saw that our local grocery store carries at least one brand variety of All Dressed as well. (For the uninitiated, of which I was one until recently, All Dressed is a combination of ketchup, BBQ, sour cream & onion, and salt & vinegar flavorings. It’s a little more tart and less sweet than your average BBQ chip.)

5/5, would (and will) binge again.

Every expat I know has a dietary vice they imported from their home country. It’s invariably something that is a.) bad for you, and b.) hard to obtain outside of its country of origin. Those two factors combine to make it far more desirable than it would be if you could walk down to the local grocery store and see it readily available at all times.

For me, it’s these:

These, my friends, are objectively the very best potato chips in the world–FunnyFrisch-brand Chipsfrisch Ungarisch.

I bring them back in bulk when I am in Germany, and I barter with German friends and relatives, exchanging a box of FunnyFrisch for whatever items they want to get from the U.S. but can’t readily get in Germany. (My brother, for example, has a thing for Chips Ahoy cookies with Reese’s bits…don’t ask me why.) But with the costs of parcel mail between Germany and the U.S., it’s thing that happens once or twice a year at most because the postage is usually far more expensive than the contents of the box.

There are online grocery stores that sell these on Amazon if you’re dying to put my claim of “best chips in the world” to the test, but they’re stupid expensive when bought that way, to the tune of $8-10 for a single 150g bag, so I only use that channel in life-threatening potato chip emergencies. It’s probably a good thing they are that expensive via the ‘zon, though, because otherwise I’d have them on auto-refill, which wouldn’t be good for my middle-aged waistline.

Food loves kindled or rekindled on our Germany trip:

1.) Ostfriesentee (East Frisian tea)

Ostfriesentee is a very dark Assam blend, strong enough to keep its flavor when using cream and sugar in it like the East Frisians do. This is a real kick-in-the-pants blend that can hold its own against strong coffee when it comes to getting the synapses kick-started in the morning. (East Frisia has a strong tea culture–they consume about fifteen times the German annual average, and East Frisians consume the most tea per capita in the world.)

2.) Hefeweizen (wheat beer)

I’ve not been a huge fan of hefeweizen before, but on our trip, my brother liberally plied me with Erdinger, and I’ll be damned if my tastebuds didn’t get used to it. Hefeweizen is the least hoppy of all the beers I know. All of a sudden, I find it exceedingly drinkable. The closest thing I can find to Erdinger locally is Harpoon’s UFO Weissbier (UnFiltered Offering). It’s not quite the same–it has a sort of citrus-y note that Erdinger lacks–but it’s close enough.

3.) Broetchen

Broetchen are the breakfast rolls you can get just about everywhere in Germany. Bakeries have them. Grocery store bread counters have them. Gas stations have them. They’re crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, and they’re the primary staple of a proper German breakfast. You slice them in half and spread jam or Nutella or cream cheese on them, or slap a few slices of Schinken (prosciutto) or other cold cuts on there. Simple as they look, they’re really hard to replicate in a home baking setting. Even the Germans don’t bother–Broetchen are so widely available everywhere that nobody goes through the effort of trying to make them from scratch, which is why it’s hard to even find a recipe for plain Broetchen.

4.) Frikadellen

Frikadellen are a cross between a burger patty and a meatball. They’re the perfect “hand food” for snacks on the go, and there isn’t a pub in Germany that doesn’t offer them as beer food. Unlike Broetchen, Frikadellen are easy enough to make at home, though, and recipes are ubiquitous.

If that list gives the impression that we spent our time in Germany mostly with eating and drinking, you would be absolutely correct. Yet despite all the excess, I only carried an extra 3/4 pound home with me, and I’m already back down to where I was before the trip. I’m guessing that all that running around had something to do with the fact that I didn’t gain ten pounds while we were there, because I put away a lot of calories.