I was excited to host an American Independence Day bbq at our house for our German friends for the 4th of July. To properly prepare for the event, a new friend of mine allowed me to come down to the Ramstein Air Force base and pick up some American decorations and food products from the commissary and BX that is not available to us in the German stores. For those who know me, you know I love to throw a party and decorations and the theme is always key!!! But, as our guest list was a little smaller for this bbq/celebration, I tried to be a little more low key.
For the bbq we did classic Cheeseburgers on the grill, American style potato salad, green salad with Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, and grilled vegetables on skewers. For dessert, I was able to get a chocolate gluten free cake mix from the commissary. As much gluten free breads, pastas and little prepackaged cookies you can find in the German stores, you cannot find any baking mixes that are gluten free for things like brownies, cakies or cookies. So this was a rare find and a special treat. Now you might be saying "why is Heather subjecting everyone to gluten free cake when she is the only one that has Celiac?" Well, because I'm not the only one! Our friend Janine also has Celiac so I was very happy to be able to share with her a traditional American cake that we could both eat! So I made a chocolate cake with (American) store bought white frosting and then did the classic American flag decoration using strawberries and blue berries. The burgers I think went over well and everyone had the salad and tried the dressing and they seemed to think it was ok. Hardly any of our German friends ate the potato salad, so I guess that one was just a little too "off" for their taste. :)
But the cake was a big hit. Surprisingly, no one had heard of frosting and come to think of it, I hadn't seen something like that round here either. Pastry shops and desserts aren't so focused on cakes here and certainly not the frosted ones. So I was pleased that everyone liked it. I was especially pleased that the gluten free cake tasted just like "normal" cakes that I remembered. Its great to know the brand of mix now to use for my dessert fix. (BTW, I made the same brand's chocolate chip cookies from their mix last night and they were great too!)
While eating we talked about some of the stuff we usually did back "home" for the fourth of July and I showed them on You Tube what some of the community parades looked like. There was also some interest in what American money looked like, and since I had just returned from the base where you have to use US dollars, I had some cash fresh on hand. We discussed the things on the bills and then got on the topic of patriotic songs, the pledge of alligance and the Star Spangle Banner national anthem in which I couldn't get the words right without hearing the melody! So, of course, to you tube we went again. All in all we got to share some good patriotic themes with our friends and they liked the decorations and the Jenks family all in our little USA themed shirts :)
The final amusement was of the fact that on the beer bottles (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I picked up some Bud Light and Samual Adams from the base too) had warnings about drinkng while you were pregnant. They all got a kick out of this and the reputation of Americans beeing sue happy and warning labels needing to be on everything since we seemed to lack common sense. You would of course, never find this warning on any alcohol here in Germany.
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