Some German Food

As I told you the other day, we were planning a German Dinner for my friends here in Ohio...

I've been a little nervous about it during the week because I thought maybe the people will not like the food. We wanted to prepare something simple, that we eat in our daily life in Germany, not something fancy. So we went for a soup and a stew. For desert we had the famous Rote Grütze, a red fruit pudding that you eat with vanilla- sauce. Unfortunatly I forgot to take pictures of that one.EVERYBODY liked the food a lot and that made me very happy. Even my picky friend from Pakistan who never eats anything except pakistani food said "oh wow, this tastes as good as pakistani food". So I was really happy and relieved :) 
We had a wonderful night and a lot of fun and if you want to prepare some simple, typical German food too, this is what we did:

For the potatoe- soup we cut lots of potatoes, carrots and turnips...

We then added parsley, garlic and onions. Boil for about 20mnts in vegetable broth and add some pepper. 
After 20mnts add German sausage, cut into small pieces. If you can't find real German sausage you can take Franks or Wieners. 
Before serving add some fresh parsley

For the lentils stew you need carrots, onions and leek. Cut everything into small pieces and fry in a little bit of oil for a few minutes. 

Then, add vegetable broth, parsley and the lentils. Cook for 20mnts and add German sausages cut into small pieces. Add some pepper and salt and cook for another 10 mnts.
We made a vegetarian version without sausage too, but to make it really Geman I think you will need the sausage ;-)
I also added a little bit of cream into the potatoe soup and a little bit of maple syrup into the lentils.

 Before dinner we had some German beer and German bread with German cheese. You can also use Pumpernickel bread which is somehow similar to German bread. 

This is really a very easy dinner (except the fact that you have to peel and cut vegetables for hours ;-)) and also easy to prepare in advance. 

For the desert (Rote Grütze) we used some frozen fruits, some canned fruits (all kind of red fruits- strawberries,raspberries, cranberries, cherrys...) and we then boild them in a little bit of cranberry juice (you can also use milk or another juice). Then we added a little bit of vanilla pudding pulver and removed it from the heat. It then becomes a red fruit pudding which is really delicious!

Happy Monday everyone!