Weekend Blitz

Hey Becky-

The title of your last blog makes me want to gag. The idea of sangria and schmaltz mixed together- while completely amusing in your entry- is a visual nightmare. *Shudder*

But yes... I am absolutely pro-sangria. First thing Matt and I did upon landing in Barcelona last year= walk to the beach, plop down at the most touristy cabana out there, and order a clay pitcher of the good stuff. I actually like the variation that's topped off with a splash of club soda or champagne... fizzy drinks are more fun. For my birthday, we went to a place in town that has three kinds of sangria- a white, a red, and a blue. How very American. Anyway, the blue sangria was champagne with curacao and blueberries. Didn't taste much like sangria but that also didn't stop us from downing a whole pitcher in less than an hour. And then consuming the red one in the next hour. Sadly, it is possible to have too much sangria... mmm but still so delicious. Unlike schmaltz.

I did have a food victory over the weekend. After several weeks of failed attempts to make bread, I successfully produced (wait for it)... hamburger rolls. That's right, homemade hamburger roles, thanks to a June 2008 issue of Gourmet. God I miss that magazine. Anyway, the instructions below. Seriously, any bungling bread-maker can successfully pop out a pile of hot, crunchy on the outside/moist and fluffy on the inside hamburger buns with this indestructible recipe:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2008/06/hamburgerbuns

I've also found a food completely local to Cincinnati- well, apart from Cincinnati style chili. Goetta is a sausage that, according to Wikipedia, is of German origin. Really, it was invented by poor German immigrants to the Cincinnati area in the 19th century. How did I find this goetta? Well, it's sold all over the grocery stores and markets here... but the hell if I'm going to buy a pound of white grainy sausage just to try it. There was an entire festival dedicated to this stuff over the weekend that included the following applications: omelets, burritos, fried balls, sausage patties, pizza, sandwiches, etc. One food made that many different ways- AND I didn't have to cook it? Ech, why not. Wikipedia and most local food blogs describe goetta as: "ground meat combined with pin head or steel cut oats. Usually goetta is made from pork shoulder or "Cali", but occasionally contains equal parts pork and beef. Goetta is typically flavored with bay leaves, rosemary, salt, pepper, and thyme. It contains onions and sometimes other vegetables."

Sounds nice, right? Ok, let me break this down for you. Ground meat with spices, check. Then mix in Irish oatmeal- that's right, the thick, grainy oats (not the flimsy processed oats). End product= goetta. Eating goetta is like consuming a bowl of oatmeal with a little sausage mixed in. Kind of weird- I can see eating a bowl of grits with sausage, but oatmeal- especially Irish oatmeal- is supposed to be sweet, or at least buttermilk-y. Not meaty. It wasn't bad... just strange. I'm not sure why the Germans in Cincinnati were harder up than the Germans in New York, but they sure knew how to stretch a buck by adding the thickest oatmeal known to man in their sausage. What mystifies me is that this sausage stuck around... how many piles of slosh that people invented to get through Depressions ended up becoming local food icons?