“Only the Krauts!” is not an expression of surprise a British person should get into the habit using when confronted by examples of Teutonic eccentricity. After all, “Krauts”, derived from one of the many German words for cabbage, has long been a disrespectful way of referring to Germans. Today it smacks of the nasty kind of knee-jerk anti-German prejudice purveyed by the British gutter press.

Flickr: wstuppert

Nevertheless, sometime around mid-January, as signs offering something called “Grünkohl” appear before everything half-resembling a restaurant, and the slightly intestinal odour of cooked cabbage wafts through the streets of the Federal Republic, one can’t quite help sounding like a somewhat thinner and less Brandy-sodden version of Winston Churchill as one utters the above-mentioned three words.

Now, when I say “only the Germans”, I don’t mean it in an exasperated, gasping sort of way; oh no, I say “only the Germans” with a swelling admiration: after all, it is things like the Grünkohl-obsession that make Germany so liveable. In you grow up in England, you quickly learn to fear January. Christmas is over and, accordingly, everyone is an estimated seventeen stone heavier and owes approximately three times their monthly salary to a variety of credit card companies: anyone expecting to have any kind of fun until, oh, at least Easter, is living in cloud-cuckoo-land.

In Germany, however, I look forward to January. Christmas markets? Not bad. Glühwein with rum? Drinkeable. Roast goose with dumplings and sweet red cabbage? Edible, just – but replace the “red” in “Rotkohl” with “Grün-“, and you’ve got my attention.

Flickr: jaeger-meister

Bang on time, just after New Year’s, the whole Grünkohl thing gets going. The reason for this focus on January is that kale is an exceptionally hardy vegetable and quite capable of withstanding temperatures some way below minus 10. This meant that, until the arrival of modern consumer society with its all-year-round avocados from Peru, kale was practically the only fresh vegetable anyone would see from late December until mid-March. Potatoes, carrots, and root vegetables of all kinds as well as pumpkins all needed to be harvested before the first frost; most other forms of cabbage would only survive a mild dusting of snow and had to be in before the new year, too. What couldn’t be stored was preserved, and this preserved food – although it stopped people from starving – was deficient in fresh vitamins.

Flickr: juergenmangelsdorf

So people started idolising kale, standing tall, proud and bright green through several inches of snow as it does; and still now, despite the fact that Germans can – like everyone else in the developed world – buy pretty much anything at any time of year, they still worship the stuff. One reason for this is the agreeable tendency that Germans have of cherishing tradition where the British disregard it, and another is certainly that some people are seeking a return to a more regional and ecologically-sensible form of eating. Yet it is the third reason that is probably the most important: meat.

Yes, just like the German craze for spring asparagus (where the actual star is the ham) or the love for red cabbage in late autumn (which is not complete without the roast beef or goose), Grünkohl is, in all actuality, about the sausages and pork cuts it is cooked with. None of which, let me make this molten-pork-fat-clear, makes me any less fond of any of it.

The other thing Grünkohl is about, in fact, and another reason for my approving so whole-heartedly of this tradition, is drinking. Traditionally, the meal itself is accompanied by a crisp lager and then washed down with a, ahem, “digestive” of corn schnapps. And by “a”, I in fact mean “several”. What’s not to like?

That’s Germany for you: always an excuse to put your feet up, eat highly calorific meat-based delicacies and knock back the beer and schnapps, all the while being traditional, cultural and environmentally friendly.

Flickr: best_german_food