an ignorant foreigner in the kitchen

The day after the crazy Swedish party my German teacher (from the courses at the institute) and his wife (who is also a German teacher) had their students over for a party. They live a bit west of town, right across from a nice brew pub (the Papiermuehle, for those who know it), and their backyard backs onto the Leutra, a small tributary of the Saale river. It's a really beautiful spot, and they have a nice little bridge built across the water as well.

Pretty well all the guests were foreigners, and we were asked to bring a dish from our countries. Always a tricky one, coming from Canada, but I opted for Aunt Gail's tourtière recipe, which everyone loves. I figured it would go over well with Germans too, as it's pretty well just pork, potatoes, and a crust, with some inoffensive seasoning. That is, unless you're a stupid foreigner and buy "Mett" instead of ground pork. "Mett" looks just like ground pork, is sold next to ground pork, and pretty well is ground pork, with one important difference - it's salted. And you wouldn't know this if you didn't taste it before cooking it, which of course I don't usually do with raw ground pork. As such, the tourtière was almost inedibly salty, which was really a shame, as it's usually so good.

I looked up Mett on Wikipedia, and found that not only is it common in Germany, but it's eaten raw. I know this isn't any more dangerous than eating raw ground beef, but I grew up always believing that you have to cook pork all the way through (which isn't true as long as whatever is fed to the pigs is free of parasites or cooked first), so the idea is still a bit hard to take.

What's even better though, is that a party dish popular in the 1970s is the "Mettigel" (literally, the seasoned meat hedgehog), wherein you shape the Mett like a hedgehog and make spikes out of raw onions or pretzel sticks. The pictures are too good not to share.

This one even has a raw egg yolk for a hat!

This one uses the aforementioned pretzel sticks, but I don't think they really gave it much effort with regard to shaping or decorating...
And how do you eat it? Spread on bread of course. While I'm sure it's good (in fact, I think we may have eaten it once at a restaurant or festival), I don't think it's going to catch on as standard potluck fare in Canada anytime soon.

Rest assured, I shouldn't be making too many more ignorant-foreigner mistakes in the future, as at the party my classmates and I were presented with our results from the German language test we took back in April. We all passed! But really, we more than passed. I got 99.5%, Fabio got 100%, and Valentina had 96%. I think the lowest mark in our whole course was still in the upper 80s. So now, I officially speak German. Jeremi took the same exam back in February and also did well - my German course was much less intensive, and we really only did the exam for kicks. Still, it's nice to have some official recognition that I sort of speak German...