First pandemic outing with non-household members, July 2021.
First pandemic outing with non-household members, July 2021.

Another unedited post.

The final bottle of coconut + lemon everyone soap that made its way from California to Franconia is empty. I look at the bottle and think, another thing I cannot replace, another thing I cannot find an equivalent for, German products do not smell or taste the same, even when labelled coconut and lemon. What looks like and is called cumin here has an astringent flavour, not the complex nutty, roasted flavour of my Frontier Co-op Non GMO cumin. Even the teas I've tried taste artificial, but many do wherever I now go, ever since I tasted T2's now Lemongrass tea in a cozy cafe in Tasmania on a rainy day.

What is it about scent and flavour that are so powerful, so specific to a place and to personal preference? I've been thinking about this a lot as I explore my options here during pandemic times when I can't remove a mask to sniff before buying. I wonder if the ubiquitous smoking culture dulls the senses here, prompting retailers to stock the more pungent and concentrated or artificially augmented.

Besides these questions, of spices and soaps, a particular leafy dark vegetable, a once staple in my eating habits, is next to non-existent here. Once at a conventionally farmed farmers market, I saw the dark green, distinct ridged leaves of lacinato kale, ubiquitous in California. Yet here? A dozen hours north of Tuscany where this kale is common? Perhaps it's my imagination, but perusing the greens sections of grocery stores suggests that dark leafy greens are not a German favourite. A week ago, I did find and buy 7 small kale plants at an organic farmer stand, but five have already been decimated by slugs; specifically, by Spanish slugs that invaded a few decades ago.

Some more determined digging online the other day did lead me to find the precise brand of cumin and soap, along with a few other location-specific products that smell and taste like home. I also found masa harina, in blue, white, and traditional yellow, and chile pasilla. All this at prices that reminded me how much we're not spending by not eating out, and so it's a fair budgetary trade-off. Not to say I'm trying to recreate my California life here. I'm not. I was thrilled to discover a certain Spanish olive oil, made of Picual olives, the taste and aroma of which had my taste buds sigh with pleasure. Then there is the pumpkin seed oil by Fandler, from Styria, in Austria--although, did you know that pumpkin seeds are indigenous to Mexico?

I may not be able to safely travel, but taste and small of places can come to me. And they must. As much as I must adapt to the local context, there are real limits to what I will do and they are based in pragmatic issues of health and well-being, as well as aesthetic experiences of pleasure.

There's something about eating local traditional meals out here that doesn't agree with me, I've regrettably noticed. Recently, we broke our household bubble rule for the first time since arriving in Germany last September to meet with friends who'd been in the Italian alps and were returning to Hamburg. It was less stressful than I imagined, although I won't pretend I was completely relaxed. We all did quick tests before meeting at a quiet restaurant with a large outdoor seating are and kept distance while unmasked together outdoors. Everyone but the kids were vaccinated.

At the restaurant I had the sauerkraut and the local franconian wurst (sausage) speciality, which I've learned the hard way is a risky meal for someone with nitrite allergies, among my other allergies to adulterated spices and flavour enhancers and thickeners that trigger headaches and digestion problems. There really wasn't much else on the menu that didn't involve gluten, dairy, meat, and sauces, typical German culinary staples that I've learned the hard way are problematic for me. Germans really like to marinade and sauce here, as well as add sugar and too much salt to anything, as a way to create flavour; even the cucumbers in my fresh salad were marinaded. As you may have guessed, the meal was the worst part of this experiment in covid-responsible socializing. That's not to say the meal was bad. The restaurant is well known and respected around here. It's just not a place for me in particular to enjoy food.

Luckly, I have learned to enjoy cooking from scratch and make it a priority.

This morning I started my day by going through Marilyn Tausend's La Cocina Mexicana: Many Cultures, One Cuisine. We're growing purple jalepeno peppers, which can be found in stores, but not organic. The masa harina arrived yesterday and it's time to experiment with tacos and re-creating the flavours of Tijuana/Baja California. Minus tomatillos, those sweet, bright, acidic, fruity vegetables protected in papery leaves. Those, I have not seen around here. We're tempted to pay some local organic farmers to grow certain vegetables for us and see if others are interested in also sponsoring this project.

Geography, I've realized, provide the conditions for climate and terroir, that link between the land and flavour and scent and food, for us and all living beings. Food is inarguably linked to health, and the health of the land and agricultural practices. Unfortunately, the practice of "efficient" mono-culture and non-organic, non-regenerative farming is ubiquitous in Germany, as in many other countries.

I often think of Alice Waters starting out in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s and commissioning local farmers to grow and raise food to a higher taste and environmentally conscious quality. Local extended all the way down to a farm in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, which I found surprising. Still, when I volunteered at her original Edible Schoolyard, I felt like this is how we need to relate to our food and the land and each other. A sense of well-being starts with what the animals eat and what the soil in which plants grow "eats". This isn't a concept even the organic grocery shops near me seem to understand or appreciate, at least not when it comes to asking what do the chicken that lay these eggs eat. Animal welfare begins and ends at whether their feed is bio and whether they have space to roam and whether or not they are eating a monoculture diet of primiarly corn or soy.

From my conversations with the more interested locals who worry about plastic and quality of food, there is here still more trust of German government labeling of food products than I would extend, especially since lobbying laws in Germany are less transparent and less regulated than those in the U.S., and food culture politics is about being bread-and-dairy vegetarian or vegan. Avoiding meat, rather than demanding better animal welfare practices, isn't foregrounding the need to debate meat product quality. Go to a Kaufland or Aldi or other supermarket and look at the walls of dairy products, the bulk of which are not organic. Finding grass-fed dairy products is almost impossible.

Also, the government that has been in charge for too long is a variation on the US GOP, whose priority has been fossil fuel polluting policies. There's no chance of healthy soil or agricultural practices with those kind of policies. The bar in Germany has been too low for too long, but they don't see it that way, and this resistance to questioning, to exploring better agricultural practices means a flavourless and limited selection of produce, inaccessible prices for quality produce, like 7 Euros per kilogram for broccoli. I won't be surprised to learn that the government subsidizes the prices of conventional farmed products, and not organic products, which makes the government the biggest obstacle to a healthier way of living and being. Based on how accessible and ubiquitous smoking and alcohol is, these two consumer tax sources, and how poorly the government has communicated the science of covid and its transmission, the trust in this government's interest in its citizens and inhabitants' health is misplaced, at best.

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