Being a missionary in Germany drove me to drink, literally.

The story begins well before Christmas.  Earlier in the year I ordered two kilograms of dark chocolate chips from a real Chocolaholic at BFA who made a special trip to France to make an annual purchase.  (Peanut butter and brown sugar are two other items purchased in bulk because of being difficult to obtain.) So at Christmas fudge seemed a wonderful way to share with others.  Another thing I’ve learned is that It is always necessary to plan ahead when doing anything here; what is simple at home is anything but over here.  The “easy microwave fudge” recipe called for sweetened condensed milk, but try finding that in a grocery store here.  Oh, they have every dairy product imaginable both in the refrigerated section and on the shelves as H products.  Just imagine, cream here, 200 grams, costs 42 cents!  But I digress.  Yes, I could find “kondens milch”, but not the sweetened kind.  

Cathedral in Ulm, Germany & Christmas market

So the next class meeting I asked my German teacher if they had it.  “Yes, it is on the shelves, but it won’t look like you expect it to. It is in a tube,” she replied.  Do you remember the picture from the first week here and the mayonnaise in a tube?  The next trip to the store, I’m looking and looking, and sure enough, because she said “in a tube” I finally saw it!  Eureka, fudge would happen!  

It isn’t that easy, though.  I wasn’t quite sure how much to buy.  Each tube is 170 grams, and I needed a 14 ounce can!  What to do?  I purchased two tubes and a 200 gram H carton of kondens milch, just in case.  When I got home and on the computer, I did a conversion and learned that the two tubes equaled about 12 ounces.

Because Christmas fell on on Tuesday, it was necessary to really plan ahead. Essentially the stores were closed for four days: they are always closed Sundays and in addition they were closed Tuesday--Christmas Day, Wednesday, and only open until noon on Monday. (That in itself is a story for later.) Anyway, Christmas Eve afternoon I printed the fudge recipe from the Internet and proceeded to pull the ingredients out:  chocolate, butter, nuts, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla. Uh, oh, no vanilla.  That had never been considered as it is  a staple always in the pantry at home.  Well, there would be no fudge for the Christmas outings the next day, and, as it turned out, we all survived.

Sweetened Condensed Milk & 1/2 t. of vanilla German style

When the stores finally reopened, Sharyon and Dan Galvin invited me to go with them to Lörrach.  While there we were in a huge Heibers grocery store.  I’ve never been so lost.  The isles at home are perpendicular, and it is easy to see from one end of the store to the other at each isle.  Not so in this store.  Each half isle shelf in length was curved like half of a parenthesis. The opposite side’s shelf curved like the other half of the parenthesis and staggered so the end of one shelf was the middle of the shelf on the opposite side--throughout the entire store!.  No two shelves connected so the store was like a maze of shelving, all taller than my eyes could see.  We became separated, and a homing device would have been helpful to locate them; the store was too large to play Marco Polo for that purpose.  Anyway, during this fiasco, I finally did find the baking goods.  Almond extract, rum, hazelnut, and others, but no vanilla! (Oh, yes, they too are packaged differently.  There are no bottles of vanilla or boxes with bottles inside.  They come in packets of four little vials that look like perfume samplers, each containing a whole 1/2 teaspoon each as I later learned.) Christmas rush must have depleted the the supply, so I left and eventually found Sharyon and Dan with the one package of wild rice I had picked up for a special soup recipie.  Oh, no, when I placed it down in front of the cashier and extracted my wallet, I had only one two-euro coin and a collection of smaller coins.  Sometime I’ll have to tell you about grocery shopping in Germany, but one thing you don’t do is hold up a line.  Pressure mounted as every last coin was counted; I had just enough!

Fortunately that was the last stop of that day, but success came later in the week  when I found vanilla at our little Kandern Heibers! New Years Eve Dan and Sharyon were coming over for that very soup (finding the smoked almonds for that was another adventure), so Sunday evening I set about to make the fudge.  Oh, yes, it wasn’t enough to just have ingredients, it now was necessary to go back to the computer to recalculate amounts for the other ingredients since the 12 ounces of sweetened kondens milch was only 85% of what was needed.  Thank goodness for the computer.  Not only does it supply conversions from grams to ounces and cooking temperatures from F to C, it let me figure 85% of the 3 cups of chips and butter!  So much for the “easy” microwave fudge.  Finally it was done, but the story isn’t. 

Our New Year’s Eve soup was fine and so was the fudge.  Afterward we played dominos, but they left around 9:00 p.m. as previously they had said they wouldn’t be able to stay up. My plans were to go to the Bloomenplatz at midnight for fireworks as I had been told that was a ‘“must.”  While waiting and sitting in my comfy recliner crocheting, I knew it would be very tempting to just stay there, so in about an hour I set out for The Sanctuary (TeachBeyond’s B&B not far away) for their game night, taking some of the fudge.

It was a hit, and when asked about it, I shared the vanilla saga. That’s when Mary said, “You haven’t heard about BFA’s vanilla.”  Then she proceeded to explain, “You get a bottle of Vodka and put vanilla beans in it, letting it sit for at least four weeks.  It’s much cheaper and readily available.” Then she went to the cupboard and showed me hers.  Wow, I’d seen the bean in the stores, now I finally knew how they were used!  Very practical. Well, that’s how being a missionary here in Germany drove me to drink; vodka was now on my shopping list!

Actually, I was rescued by an intervention. After Christmas break Cammy Jones and I were talking and it turns out she had brought some things back from their trip to the states to share with others.  I am now the owner of a purchased bottle of vanilla that will probably last me the entire stay in Kandern.  You can now relax.

For at least an hour Kandern is aglow with fireworks--all over by individuals.  Happy New Year