Experimenting with German Food
Jeannette is still laughing. Why, you ask? I ate tripe for lunch. Why would that make her laugh, you ask? Well, we weren't sure what it was, and she said "Oh, just try it". Later, she told me she thought it was squid. It was OK, I didn't much like it.
Then, later that day, I mentioned it to my German teacher. She told me it was a common dish in this area. I though that was strange, because there are no oceans anywhere near here. The my German teacher said to me something that roughly translates as "that's not a fish. That's from somewhere inside a cow."
Oh well, at least now I know.
posted by Allanimal @ 22:02
4 Comments
4 Comments:
I am still laughing. I can't help it, but everytime I think of the word 'tripe', I just break down. I'm sorry, I can barely type, even now.
I really wasn't trying to be mean. There was a sample plate of this food sitting out at the cafeteria, and I did tell Allan that he should try it. I will admit to that. Even though it looked like sauteed pork fat. In gravy. With potatoes. Sometimes these are the best foods there are! I didn't even suggest squid until he mentioned that it had a funny texture. And it had those little bumpy edges like squid sometimes has. And Kutteln sounds like a creepy crawly sea animal, right?
And even Allan admits, it wasn't the tripe (hee hee) itself that was so bad, it was that the gravy wasn't very good. And I ate a piece, too.
Oh - and one of Allan's co-workers laughed too - he sat down with a big plate of it and seemed surprised that Allan was eating the same. BTW, we did see it on the menu at the Ratskeller, and there you have to pay $11 for the pleasure! I figure, if you are going to eat tripe (hee hee), you are better off paying $3 for it than $11.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(OK, and because I am really mean, I called my parents and told them about it!
Do you know what tripe (hee hee) is? Because I was having trouble accepting the definition 'stomach'. It didn't look like stomach. It turns out, tripe (hee hee) is stomach-lining. Nice.)
Can someone please remind me again why I love her?
Is this one of the things her mother was talking about when she asked me, before we got married, if I knew what I was getting myself into?
Hmmm...
Well, at least after 'all these years', I can still make her laugh.
In fact, I'm going to do it some more.
Tripe
Tripe
Tripe
Tripe!!!
Trrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiipe!
tripetripetripetripe...TRIPE!
(yum!)
So is TRIPE the American or Gemran word? I never heard Kutteln before either though. Geez, those Heilbronn people, a strange bunch. This is going to make you feel a lot better. In North Hessen (where I am from), you get cow stomach (or the lining, sorry, but its the same thing!!!) for your dog. for a full sized dog, you'd get one whole piece i guess. now, that thing you serve to the dog raw. rather fast after you buy it because guess what... it REALLY stinks up your refridgerator!!! It's got a nice green inside color. not grass green, but really disgusting green. thought I'd share that. :-)
(Dorit)
I don't think the problem was knowing not to eat tripe if it were labeled as such, but more an issue of language. When something is labeled Kutteln, it sounds quite harmless. Especially if it is labeled Saure Kutteln, and looks like thin strips of sauteed pork fat in sauerbraten gravy. And it was served with potatoes! I barely resisted - I think it was only because there was melted cheese with cranberries in the vegetarian line that I didn't take it myself!
This might fall in the category of "just enough information to be dangerous". It is easy to know the words for cow, pig, rabbit, deer, and feel safe. Then you add heart, liver, kidney, tongue, and you start to feel like you can't possibly go wrong. (Especially if you know cat, dog, groundhog, squirrel.) And that is where you get yourself in trouble!
I used to go to this Ethiopian restaurant in Frankfurt, and there was a dish on the menu that none of us could figure out. There was always that certainty that it referred to something with four legs, but that made it that much more curious - what kind of animal would be on a menu, that you wouldn't know? We never ordered it. But I am really proud of Allan! He has already learned something that I didn't know!
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