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Food in Germany

Many people ask about food in Germany and honestly before we moved here I heard a lot of comments about how German food is supposed to be really good.  Our experience so far has been that the food is pretty good, but you do have to get used to certain things.  We are in the land of sausages so actual hot dogs with soft skins have been kind of hard to find.  Most of the "hot dog looking things" are actually sausages with a rather crisp bite to them.  Sour cream has also proved to be difficult to find but we solved that one by going to the Russian store.  Another thing that Chris and Lusha are missing is cheddar cheese.  For some reason cheese tastes really different and we haven't found something we really like here yet.  Kids are ok with German ranch dressing but Chris would prefer the American style.  We are telling the kids (and ourselves) that we came here for a different experience and it certainly does include trying new foods.

The things that have been really good here is very affordable fresh fruits and vegetables.  We are definitely loving that.  There are different markets (kind of like farmers markets) in the city and they have tons of stuff where everything is local and tastes good.  Downside to that is that food does tend to spoil :)  There is also no added dyes in the food and from what I understand no added high fructose corn syrup.

This leads to me to the following ...  For many years now I've been reading all kinds of articles that reducing food dyes and HCFS reduces impulsivity in ADHD kids.  Back in the States, we've been pretty careful about what we bought, read the labels, you name it ...and it seemed like it helped Andrei.  Of course we also had a lot of other supports, both in school, and by creating atmosphere that allows him to be impulsive and release his energy in other ways (swimming, diving, trampoline, etc.)  So despite the fact that food is more natural in Germany,  Andrei is what we say in our household is "off the hook" and has been that way since we've arrived.

I'd be more than happy to answer any questions since food seems to be one of those things that everybody is asking about.

P.S.  Experiences are obviously different for everybody. Our current visitor is really missing corn and while we love corn, it's ok not to have it.



tiny fridge


ranch substanse

no comments :)
part of our recycling pile, whole new post on that

Comments

Tristan said…
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12/15/2014 1:50 AM
Tristan said…
Very neat! How are they at labeling ingredients for allergies? For example eggs and soy are the allergies we have, would we find that information on the ingredient label?
12/15/2014 1:50 AM
Maria Knorr said…
My kid has allergies to walnuts and sesame so those are the two I am paying attention to and it's definitely not as obvious as in the States. I was used to seeing bold lettering saying "this contains bla bla ..." Here so far I've had to actually read the labels. As has been my experience -everything is a bit more complicated!
12/16/2014 8:49 PM
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