My stomach

Since I've gotten to Germany, I haven't been able to eat without some difficulty. I tell everyone I'm eating well and I do when I'm able to stomach food. I don't know what it is about this place, but I take two bites of something and literally end up feeling like I've eaten a five-course meal. Needless to say, I'm pretty hungry usually. However, most of my cooking specialities lie within one of these categories: Mexican, Asain, Itailian. Notice, not German. Also, my two main meats are chicken and beef, chicken 90% of the time. Here, there is very little in the wayward of chicken products (unless you count whole chickens and chicken nuggets).

I'm going insane. I love to cook and this is madness. I go to the store, dictionary in hand... none of the words on the shelf match what's in my book. I take a deep breath, fully realizing I look like an idiot already and look at the ingrediant list on the pack of the product. Desperately I try to imagine what chicken, egg, gerkin salad when taste like. I decide not good. So onto the next product... Lachs. I think, "Lachs, lachs... that kind of sounds like lox, right?" So I buy it. I get home and, sure enough it's lox. Score! And sure enough... it's in oil. No score. So I have to wash the lox off before I can even eat it.

Shopping is hard here. I can't find canned soup or milk that comes in a larger container than .5 litre. Oh, and everything chocolately treat tastes like Nutella here. I will never eat Nutella again. God knows this... that's how serious this is.

Really, my dinner tonight is chocolate milk (in a plastic container with an aluminum lid you take off... like yogurt) and a jar of mushrooms. No joke. I am in serious withdrawl of my favorite foods. I'd even eat something REALLY bad at this point... like a KFC Famous Bowl ("The 'Mashed Potato with Gravy Famous Bowl' has 690 calories (corrected: 270 of those from fat), 31 grams of fat, 55mgs of cholesterol, 26 grams of carbohydrates, and 27 grams of protein). Death in a bowl pretty much. Dessert being a fried twinkie.

Yeah. That's how bad this has gotten. I need a slice of veggie from Matt B's or a roll of sushi from Jasmine's or Shogun's (there's a sushi place here, but I'm not sure I want to try it). I can't even walk into Netto's meat section without becoming sick to my stomach because of the pork smell. This trip seals it. No pork. EVER. It is such a sickening smell that it's hard for me to buy fish. I lose my appetite.

But there's hope... my mom and Grandma Jo have sent a box filled with generous goodies, including cans of sardines in mustard suace. Heavenly. Pure bliss in a pull-tab can.

Anyway, I've got to get on this paper due Wednesay. I won't have time to do it tomorrow.

Cheers!