The reason why there have been no new entries on this blog for a long time is not that I have lost interest in German food—on the contrary. I still bake every single loaf of bread we eat, and real bread for me of means German bread. And I also tend to my German herb garden and my German berry patch, which again rewarded me with a bountiful harvest of red and black currants, gooseberries, and raspberries this year. My favorite dessert will always be Rote Grütze (Red Berry Pudding) with vanilla sauce made from scratch. With the beginning of the pandemic, however, life changed drastica ..read more

Every time I cook dinner I am grateful for the food I can put on the table. I know that so many people right now are in dire straights because of the pandemic. Starting today, I will donate all the royalties from the sale of the ebook edition of my German regional cookbook, Spoonfuls of Germany, to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania. I receive $4.42 for each ebook sold on Amazon.com. Second Harvest turns every $1 donation into six meals for people in need. So… if there are any German dishes you always wanted to try, such as this delightful Pea Soup with ..read more

Oscar Rosen and his wife Rachel Rosen, née Kesler, on their engagement in Metz, France, February 1936. A few months ago, I watched a German TV program about Niklas Frank, the youngest son of Hans Frank, who as governor-general of occupied Poland in World War II was responsible for the murder of the Polish Jews and other war crimes and crimes against humanity. Talking about the right-wing German party AfD and its claim that the years between 1933 and 1945 were merely a “stain” in Germany’s “glorious” history, Niklas Frank said, “Someone who really loves Germany (…) first and foremost carries ..read more

In September, on a day with glorious early autumn weather, the video team from The Year of German-American Friendship (Deutschlandjahr) came along when I went apple picking at my favorite local orchard, County Line Orchard. I had written about the owner, Todd Smith, in my very first blog post for The Year of German-American Friendship last October, so this was a wonderful way of wrapping up my participation in this year-long cultural diplomacy campaign. Later, the team filmed me making German Apple Pancakes in my kitchen: I’ve had the recipe for German Apple Pancakes on this blog since 2013 ..read more

Sausage vending machine in Hanover, Germany, 1931 (Wikimedia Commons). This is my last blog post for The Year of German-American Friendship. Over the past thirteen months I have profiled people in the US from very different backgrounds and professions: a butcher, a miller, a gingerbread baker, a candy maker, a German food truck owner, the two founders of a döner restaurant chain, a food historian, and a fruit grower – all with a link to Germany. I am wrapping my series up with Elliott Shore, who epitomizes German-American friendship and is professor of history emeritus at Bryn Mawr College ..read more

Black Forest Cake is traditionally snow-white and decorated with a circle of cherries. Not my grandmother’s Black Forest Cake – hers was pink. She always made it that way, and I have never baked a Black Forest Cake using any other recipe. Whether my grandmother shared my aversion to candied cherries, or they were an expensive, unnecessary and probably hard-to-find ingredient in post-War Germany, I don’t know. As she did, I decorate my Black Forest Cake with only shavings of dark chocolate. For special occasions such as a birthday, I might reach for the pastry bag and decorate the cake with whi ..read more

Strawberry Vodka Mixer (Erdbeerlimes). Recipe at the bottom of blog post. If you have been to Germany in the summertime you might have grown fond of what makes a German summer wunderbar: having a beer and a Bavarian Brotzeit at a biergarten or, if you are from Frankfurt like me, a glass of apple wine mixed with seltzer water called Gespritzter; a German barbecue (Grillabend); or scrumptious fruit desserts such as the classic red fruit pudding Rote Grütze, or the iconic spaghetti ice cream that you can find in virtually every ice cream parlor in Germany. Thankfully a lot of these cravings, such ..read more

Leaving your home country to settle elsewhere brings along a loss of your cultural references, no matter whether the move to a new country was voluntary or involuntary. There are two cultural references that will always stick with you, and you don’t want to let them go because they are part of who you are: language and food. That’s why I don’t find it surprising when immigrants who otherwise happily adapt to life in the new country, maintain their culinary traditions, and continue to speak their native language. I do. As an immigrant to America, and as a gardener who grows red currants so I ca ..read more

Easton Farmers’ Market. Photo by Elizabeth Judge Wyant, courtesy of Easton Farmers’ Market. During the first couple of years after I moved to rural northeast Pennsylvania in the early 2000’s, I commuted to New York City once a week. The bus made a stop in downtown Easton. I was new to the area and still in exploration mode. What I saw then of Easton from a bus window did not pique my curiosity. The streets were deserted, the storefronts empty or boarded up, the buildings run down. It looked like an abandoned movie set from PBS Masterpiece. Easton was not the only city in the Lehigh Valley with ..read more

Kevin Miller Steigerwalt, Ohl, Helfrich, Zimmerman… the surnames of many of our neighbors here in Pennsylvania Dutch country are utterly familiar to my German ears. Some locals, such as my friend Todd, can trace their ancestors back to the mid-1700s when Germans first settled in our township. This has been primarily farm country but in recent decades, the landscape has changed. During the 18 years I have lived here, I have seen several farms with their requisite red barns disappear, and the land being subdivided for residential or commercial development. Our home sits on such a parcel. Once pl ..read more