I spent the first part of last week on the remainder of my trip to the UK, dining on delicious home-cooked food, visiting friends and spending a classic British bank holiday weekend getting soaked through walking along a Welsh canal and standing round a barbecue under an umbrella, desperately trying to keep some sausages dry. It was all absolutely blissful, and come Tuesday, part of me was really quite sad to leave. It didn’t help of course that thanks to a Eurostar delay and subsequent missed connection, we ended up spending 13 hours on and off trains back to Wiesbaden; all I can say is praise be for the ICE on-board bistro and their mini bottles of wine.
After such a long journey, we were particularly happy to be home, a packet of fancy pork scratchings in my pocket and three months’ worth of tea in my bag. I took great pleasure in wandering down to the Wiesbaden farmers’ market on Wednesday to pick up some locally-grown veg: for all the wonderful food available in English supermarkets, with all its excessive snazzy packaging, I felt truly frustrated about how much of the fresh produce had been flown halfway round the world to get there.
I took even greater pleasure in ambling around the orchards in Mainz-Drais yesterday, where the air smells of strawberries and every tree is currently sagging under the weight of ripening fruit. Speaking of which, I’ve now got a kilo of various berries to get through, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you with my pick of last week’s food news.
Food news and recipes from Germany…
★ Wine is a universal language – a great little story from just up the road in Kaiserslautern
★ How to make the perfect Wiener Schnitzel
★ Getting all Willy Wonka in Berlin: a visit to Ritter Sport World, where you can make your own chocolate
★ Think elderflower cordial’s too tricky to make? Think again
…and further afield:
★ Gluten-free chocolate ombre cake. Too bad it’s another nine months till my birthday.
★ 5 ways to deal with dinner party guests who won’t put down their phones
★ 8 ways to use an asparagus steamer
★ Lemon, parmesan and beer asparagus recipe. You read that right: beer.
That bacon sandwich looks like a winner! Oooh gluten free recipe!
It was SO good, we had bacon from my friend’s local farm shop, and that gluten-free bread is really very tasty, it’s called Genius and I think it’s available from most of the big supermarkets. And yes, that chocolate cake… can’t imagine mine would turn out looking like that, but I reckon it could be worth a go!
So glad you had a nice trip home… I did actually have to stare at that sausage roll for a couple of minutes! 😀
Thank you 🙂 And that’s exactly what I did in the shop! Well, I suppose it was more of an adoring gaze… 😉
It looks and sounds so idyllic!
Haha! Well I’m not quite sure about idyllic, but local produce-wise, I do feel very lucky to be here 🙂
Barbecuing in the rain. How very British! Haha.
I wanted to go to Ritter Sport Wolrd in Berlin, but there wasn’t time.
Couldn’t get more British! It was perfect 😉
Incidentally, having seen your socks and sandals shot on your blog yesterday, I meant to tell you that I’ve just been informed that apparently such footwear is now in fact all the rage for hipsters in Shoreditch. Unbelievable!!
Hi,
Looks like fun! We just moved here and the only one I know is Paul -Bauernhof. I would love to take my 5 year old son to this strawberry farm. Do you know the address to this place and do they have cherries there too? Thanks in advance and have a lovely day! By the way you have a lovely blog. Love it!
Hi Shirley, thank you very much! And welcome to Wiesbaden 🙂
There are lots of places to buy strawberries in Drais but the farm where we get ours is called Schülers . It’s just off the main road out of Mainz on the L427 as you go up the hill and before you turn into Drais itself. You can’t miss it: they have a HUGE strawberry sign! You can pick your own there too, and they did have white asparagus last time I was there, however I don’t know if they do cherries.