The Thin Beer

Jammin' on the one

When I make my list of feathers in Denmark's cap and its black eyes, the difficulty finding peanut butter is one of the black eyes.  However, the dizzying variety of marmelade is a feather in the cap.

Den Gamle Fabrik has 21 regular varieties, and there are special seasonal varieties as well.  Besides all the common things (strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, boysenberry, orange, apricot, cherry), there are more exotic (blackcurrant, tropical, plum, raspberry/rhubarb, orange/carrot, apricot/carrot, apple/blackcurrant), and the downright unusual (ginger, rose hips).  Blackcurrant is excellent, I really like the ones with carrot in them, and we have a jar of ginger marmelade in the fridge right now.  It's pretty good, not nearly as offensively spicy as I had feared.  Conspicuously absent is grape jelly.

For our Danish readers, yes, we really do put peanut butter and marmelade together.  The protocol is to first spread peanut butter on toasted wheat bread, and then spread the marmelade on top of that (peanut butter will not spread on top of marmelade---try it and see).  Or, you can make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Spread the peanut butter on each of two slices of bread, spread the marmelade on top of the peanut butter on one of them, and them put them together (peanut butter side in) and enjoy!

Another feather in Denmark's cap (a huge feather, actually) is pålæg chocolate, thin pieces of chocolate expressly intended to be laid on bread in an open-faced sandwich.  Put two of those on peanut butter toast---yummy!

I found a rutabaga!

Theresa wonders in the comments if I might be eating beets because I'm having sympathy pregnancy cravings.  I'm not sure, but it's not exactly a craving for them, more like a grudging acceptance.

I found a rutabaga.  Once I realized that kohlrabi is "glaskål" in Danish, then I was able to realize that rutabaga is "kålrabi" in Danish, and then I was able to find one (a huge one).

My brother-in-law in Germany scoffs at the price we paid for a 3 kg bag of, let's be honest, deer food.  I guess it's a sign of our acceptance of Danish prices that I didn't really blink at them.  They turned into parts of five or six meals, so I guess we did all right though.

Denmark: almost out of peanut butter

One of the first things we missed after moving here was peanut butter.  It took us a while to find it in our local grocery store in Aarhus, and then it took us a while longer to find a decent brand.  My current favorite is Urtekram's organic peanut butter (with 99.5% organic peanuts, 0.5% sea salt, and nothing else), which I like better than the Green Choice organic peanut butter primarily because the shape of the jar facilitates stirring.

Our local grocery store has been sold out of it for a couple of weeks, and I haven't found either brand in any of the other places I happen in to.  In fact, I've pretty much struck out on finding peanut butter period, which is weird because I'm convinced that we're the only people who ever buy it.

Angela wanted to try a recipe requiring PB, so we ended up getting a jar of "Nutz" (94% "American" peanuts, the rest is sugar, palm oil, and salt).  It's produced in England, but it's supposed to be American, and that's why it has a picture of a Chevy convertible and a hockey player (?) on the front.

On the left-hand side (detail) is a football player and the capital dome.

On the right-hand side, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge (dangerously missing some cables), the Statue of Liberty, and some kind of pagoda (?).

PS: The recipe was Nigella Lawson's peanut butter squares.  They're dead simple, there's no baking, they taste great (and would be better with better peanut butter), and they have a huge advantage over Reese's (in Denmark) because they don't require a special trip to the Americana store in Copenhagen and don't cost 15 kroner (about $2.50) for a package containing three peanut butter cups.

Post Scriptum

I have eaten more beets in the last two days than I have in the period between the dawn of time through November 9, 2005.  They're not horrible, but I still think they taste a little like biting into a corn cob.

Last night's dinner

Yesterday Angela and I walked up to the ISO grocery store at the Hvidovre Station Center (a little mall at the train station in Hvidovre), because they have organic root vegetables and also because we're trying to take a long walk every day until the baby comes.

Danish cuisine (at least in the winter) consists quite heavily of root vegetables, which is fine with me, the original rutabaga fan.  We got a 3kg bag (think just over six pounds) of our choice of assorted vegetables for 45 kroner (think six or seven bucks).  Here is about half of our loot:

Our American readers should be able to recognize potatoes, carrots, a sweet potato, a beet, red onions, and a turnip.  The ugly thing in the upper left is celeriac (just plain celeri in Danish), a big ball that tastes like celery.  In the middle at the top is kohlrabi (glaskål in Danish), and the long white thing that looks like a giant white carrot or a parsnip is actually parsley root (persille in Danish).

I cut them into chunks (except the kohlrabi, half the sweet potato, and most of the celery, there wasn't room in the pan), drizzled them with olive oil to coat, and sprinkled them with salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme:

Baked them at 200 C (think about 400 F) for forty minutes or until done (the beets take the longest), stirring them around every ten minutes.  It was very good.

Our oven is tricky.  It is a gas oven, and very small.  The door doesn't fit snugly (so it loses a lot of heat), and it doesn't heat evenly at all (cakes are almost impossible).  Just after dinner, a guy from the gas company stopped by to check it out, because they are upgrading to a new kind of gas in 2007, and our older oven will need to be replaced (by our landlord).  Hopefully it happens before 2007, so we can enjoy it!

We were also able to find butternut squash at the ISO.  We don't see winter squash in every grocery store here, so we had to get one.

Celebrity Pizzas?

I got a flyer through my mail slot from a restaurant in my neighborhood called Merdos Pizza Cafe.  Check out their Deep Pan Pizza menu (Items 40 - 51). 

(Ingredients translated from the Danish)
Julia Roberts - ham
Pamela Anderson - ham, meatsauce, pepperoni
Bill Clinton - ham, mushroom
Hawaii - ham, pineapple, banana
Las Vegas - shawarma, lettuce & dressing
Bratt (spelled with two t's) Pitt - ham, pepperoni, green pebber
New York - ham, bacon, mini cocktail sausages
Mike Tyson - ground beef, pepperoni, chili, garlic, jalapenos
Titanic - chicken, bacon, pineapple, curry
Sylvester Stallone - ground beef, chili
Arizona - shawarma, mushroom, sweet red pepper, chili
Love - strips of meat, pepperoni, green pepper, chili, garlic

Am I the only one amused by this?  Perhaps I should change the category from celebrity pizzas to Famous People, Places, and Feelings Pizzas?   Why does a Las Vegas pizza include shawarma?  Forgive me,  but I am still not sure what shawarma is.  I know it is my own ignorance on display here.   

Culinary Bavaria

We've had quite a bit of German food and beer on our three trips to Germany (at New Year's between leaving the U.S. and coming to Denmark, at Easter for our nephew's first communion, and my trip in August for the summer school).  Here is a handful of photographic evidence.

These are Regensburg wurst and sauerkraut, from Regensburg.  I had these at the Wurstkuchen on the banks of the Danube.  It has been serving sausages since the 12th century.  There is a lot of fat in the sausages, but they are still good with the kraut.

Wash them down with a hefeweizen, an excellent beer for a hot summer day.

These are weisswurst (white sausages).  They were a snack in Erlangen, but they can be found all over Bavaria.  I think the weisswurst were my favorite.  They are filled with herbs (parsley?  something else?), and delicious.  No beer with this one, because I was hopping on the motorcycle right after eating.

Above is rauchbeer from Bamberg.  The smoky flavor is not for everyone, but I liked it.  It's not what I would describe as refreshing, and it definitely needs to go with food (heavy food that the beer can't overpower).

This is schweinhaxe (half of a ham hock) from a beer garden in Englischer Garten in Munich.  It is served with sauerkraut and a liter of helles beer.  I was talking about the ham hock the whole time I was motorcycling in Germany, and finally got to try it during the summer school.

A standard (?) basket of food

As part of the new regime around here, we pay attention to the comments and sometimes even answer them.

Kevin Marshall asks whether the difference in price between organic and non-organic food is due to the fact that organic food is relatively less expensive, or whether everything else is relatively more expensive.  He suggests comparing the price of a standard basket of food.

Since I have nothing in the house, I just ran out and got a basket of food for dinner.  I'm not sure how "standard" it is, because I'm living the bachelor life this week.  I love to cook, but I don't always like to spend much effort on cooking (or cleaning up) for just myself.  Here's what was in the basket:

250g champignon (mushrooms) - $2.06
Oliven grønne m/peb (green olives with pimiento) - $0.99
2 frozen pizzas - $6.90
6 pack of Tuborg Påskebryg (Easter beer, on sale) - $2.93
Bottle deposit - $1.04
Total - $13.90

Converted at about $0.17 per kroner.  I bought this at the corner grocery store, which isn't the cheapest in town.  I'm gonna put the olives and mushrooms on the frozen pizzas (along with onion and tomato that are in the fridge).  I overpayed for the mushrooms, because I only bought 250g, but there's no way I can use 500g of mushrooms fast enough.

One thing that seems different about Europe is that we shop a lot more frequently, and only buy food for one or two days.  Since I bike or walk past the corner store, and work across the street from another store, it is very easy.  And since our European refrigerator has a very tiny form factor, it is not practical to "stock up" in the same way that we do in the U.S.

One of our "dreams" before I dragged Angie along on this adventure was to buy a chest freezer for the garage.  We have a very different lifestyle now.

Refried beans

Armed with a recipe for refried beans and some excellent tips from one of our friends in Minnesota, I plan to go forth and make vegetarian burritos.  We have purchased a bag of dried "brown beans", which look like pinto beans to me.