You may already be a wiener
Today Iris and I went down to Pike Place Market because we needed some slab bacon from Bavarian Meats. Iris remembered that last time we went there I bought her a chocolate umbrella. Iris does not forget candy. But this time she got something more memorable.
Here’s how things go every time I go to Bavarian Meats, which has the best non-Nueske’s bacon in town and sells it for $5.25/lb. Every time I go in for slab bacon, I have an amusing exchange with the women behind the counter. I say, “Give me a pound of slab bacon in one chunk.” They say, “I don’t know how much a pound is until I cut it, so it might be more or less.”
One time she showed me where she was going to cut, and I asked for a little more. It came to a pound and a quarter. The next time I let her cut, and it was exactly a pound. This time I asked for half a pound and she cut a pound. I’ll use it.
We got the bacon and a chocolate umbrella and a Kinder Egg, and then the lady gestured at Iris and said to me, “Vould she like a viener?”
I said, “I’ll be she would.”
She gave Iris a cold hot dog from the case. Iris loved it, of course. She ate half of it even though we’d just had an apple fritter from Three Girls Bakery. Plus, now I can make her laugh by saying, “Vould you like a viener?”
Local sex columnist Dan Savage is also a Bavarian Meats fan:
I love their brats and sausages. And the large German ladies who work there are sweet and gruff—my two favorite, highly contradictory German traits.
They’re mean-ish until you’re a proven regular. Then they’ll do anything for you. Kinda like the guy I dated when I lived in Germany.
When we got home Laurie told Iris that next time she’s offered a free wiener, she should say, “Ja!” in an operatic way.
Comment by Lore
I am unreasonably happy to hear that you were able to buy a Kinder egg! I’d thought that they were still illegal in the U.S. (they may still be) under a law that assumes that little American children are too dumb to stop eating once they hit a non-food object embedded in food. I guess little children in the rest of the world are smarter, and so get Kinder eggs at every meal.
Kinder eggs are AMAZING.
Posted on August 20, 2006 at 6:01 am
Comment by Andrew Feldstein
I’d never heard of a “Kinder egg,” or so I thought, until I searched the web and was directed to a Wikipedia article. I recognized the picture they linked to—my favorite Italian market usually has these by the register.
Gratuitous plug: In the Detroit area, try Cantoro Market in Livonia on Middlebelt between 7 and 8 mile for incredible Italian breads—the ciabatta, especially, is unbelievable and, on not-too-humid days, often reaches the sublime.
Posted on August 21, 2006 at 5:34 am
Comment by anita
I miss those ladies! I never shopped there often enough to become a regular but they liked me because I bought wacky things for choucroute. :)
Posted on August 21, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Comment by MG
My husband loves Bavarian Meats and always remembers fondly how he would receive a free weiner when he visited as a child. He used to adore their beef jerky, but I was recently told it’s no longer produced. Very sad.
Posted on August 22, 2006 at 2:15 am
Comment by Chris
What was inside the Kinder Egg?
Posted on August 22, 2006 at 11:43 am
Comment by mamster
Chris, we’ve opened a ton of Kinder eggs lately, so I’m not positive about this, but I think it was a plastic macaw that rocks on a perch. Pretty high quality. But it may have been a plastic car.
Posted on August 22, 2006 at 11:57 am
Comment by Chris
Nice! I’ve never opened a Kinder egg without assembling the contents, sitting back and saying “What IS it?”, so if you even recognized it, you’re way ahead of me. Although maybe it actually was a car and you just thought it was a macaw on a perch.
Posted on August 25, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Trackback by Married ...with dinner
Red-letter day…
In addition to being my dad’s birthday (Happy B-Day, Pops!), August 31 is also Blog Day. What’s that, you ask? I’m so glad you did! Here’s a clip from the BlogDay site (which seems to be overwhelmed with traffic at the moment): …
Posted on August 31, 2006 at 11:01 am