Peeled white asparagus. Photo (cc) Click Clack Gorilla

It’s summer. The air is hot and sticky, and the daylight stretches out like a cat until it’s almost ten o’clock. It is not the time of year for hot soups. Yet it is the time of year for asparagus, and one of my favorite asparagus dishes is Spargel Suppe mit Fladle, which is Swabian (Schwäbisch) for asparagus soup with strips of pancake. And it’s delicious.

A slightly ambiguous photo of a park sign… "Please BBQ dogs" (Flickr: bleicher)

If I said to you barbeque, you’d say to me: America! After all, it is the land of BBQ sauce, rib and steak cook-outs and, oddly enough, a variety of grilled “dogs” – which, I have to confess, I always had the Koreans down for, but whaddya know?

Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s a little limited in his range of associative thinking when it comes to barbequed food: after all, how many of you would instantly think of Germany when you smell charcoal and singed sausages?

Who'd have thought? The best Asian food I've had in Germany was at the Frankfurt train station. Photo (cc) Resident on Earth

You may laugh, but I have to say that some of the yummiest Asian food I’ve had in Germany was at none other than the Frankfurt Hauptbanhof (that is, the main train station, for the English-speaking folks). For those of you traveling through the station, I’d highly recommend trackside dining at the Asia Gourmet. It’s clear over on the side, by tracks 22 and 23.

Last Friday afternoon I took the train into Frankfurt for an afternoon of shopping, and my first stop was lunch at this place. It’s my Frankfurt ritual.

How not to butcher the German language at the butcher. Photo (c) Jen

One day last week, in a remarkable coincidence, my dear and wise uncle sent me an article about German meat and butchers. It must have been fate, because that very day I was contemplating how to go to the butcher nearby our apartment to get some ground beef so I could make some chili with some chili seasoning I brought to Germany with me.

First of all, I love that we have a butcher. Sure, I can just as readily go to the grocery store and buy pre-packaged meats – maybe the “easier” option for a non-German speaker like me – but as the article points out, Germany is renowned for its meats and its specialty butchers (which sadly is a trade that is in decline as more people opt for supermarket convenience).

Frankfurt's Kleinmarkthalle has a lot to offer. Photo (c) Jen

Baby, I hit the JACK POT.  I discovered Frankfurt’s Kleinmarkthalle, an indoor market that has fabulous produce, cheeses, meats, breads, desserts, fish, exotic fruits, wine, exotic spices, flowers…it’s all a veritable foodgasm.

Sure, Frankfurt (and my local village) has its share of open-air food markets (and I’m not discounting them, not one bit), but Kleinmarkthalle has fresh cilantro (I finally found cilantro in Germany!) and fresh pasta. It also has an array of international/regional food specialty stands such as Italian, Greek, Persian, Tyrolean, and most exciting of all…a stand for Asian/Latino specialties! Some of my Mexican food problems will now be solved. I may still have to learn to make my own tortillas, but at least now I have the right flour to do it with.

A beautifully-set Christmas table: as important in Germany as elsewhere (All pictures from debagel on Flickr)

In under 48 hours, I will be celebrating my third Christmas in Germany. Most of my friends are still mildly surprised that I don’t go back to my mum’s for the festivities: Christmas is, after all, supposed to be the time when people return home to see their family to be treated like big kids by their parents.

However, I think it would be a shame to live in Germany and miss out on Christmas here, which, thanks to the Weihnachtsmärkte, extensive pine forests, and the invention of the word Gemütlichkeit really does have a head-start on all things Christmassy.

Crafts for sale at Frankfurt's Christmas Market, Photo: Lama Abdo

I was around five or six years old when I saw snow for the first and one of just a few times. I remember being so happy to know that I didn’t have to go to school that day. Everything stopped. No one was able to do anything; we were not used to having snow – I mean we hardly even have rain in the winter. Almost 20 years has passed since that scene, but this morning when I left home I felt something falling – it was again real snow in Frankfurt, the only difference being that in Germany nothing stops due to the snow, it’s as if things are prepared to sustain all weather conditions, and life continues as usual, the trains, S-bahns, U-Bahns…