I could not say that I was ever a huge foodie before I came abroad.  Yes, I enjoyed food, I appreciated it, and I have never been much of a picky eater, always willing to dive in and try all sorts of new food.  But my parents are not and ever have been star gourmands:  Mom is a whiz with baking goods, and Dad, well, who doesn’t love frozen peas?  Two years of Hinman didn’t help much. I grew to love the salad bar and Stir-fry Steve, but catch of the day… The memories of that mystery fish entrée still linger in my mind and taste buds.

However, upon landing in Germany and spending time in so many different countries, I was converted to the great following of food.  And I am still obsessed.  It was not only the first time that I started to cook for myself, but also a time for me to encounter several different cultures, each with hundreds of years of traditions and customs in the kitchen.  And so began my year of culinary enlightenment, starting off slowly and growing with every plate I tried.

It all started in Germany, at the beginning of the summer.  Germany is definitely not renown for its excellence in the kitchen, but summer is a great time to be there, as each sunny day is filled with barbecues and delicious beer.  Barbecues are the epitome of German food; kilos and kilos of meat are cooked on the fire and eaten with simple German rolls and bread.  The meat ranges from steaks, marinated in spicy and salty sauces, to bratwurst, round and pink, to my favorite, small sausages, filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon.  Tasty.  Of course, every BBQ must be accompanied by loads of amazing, refreshing beer.  Other than barbecues, afternoons were spent picking strawberries in a local field and eating them right off the vine, and cooking with my friends and roommates.

This past summer, I also had the chance to visit Poland, Austria and many different parts of Germany, and with each country came a whole slew of new tastes and flavors.  Visiting my friend Peter in Vienna, I had a traditional Austrian dinner the first night, consisting of glazed ham and Semmelknödel, dumplings the size of my fist, made of potatoes.  To drink, we had white wine, mixed with mineral water.  The next day, we tucked into an afternoon snack of Sachertorte and coffee.  Sachertorte is a dense chocolate cake, filled with apricot jam and traditionally eaten with whipped cream.  The original cake itself is only made in Vienna and Salzburg, and is shipped from there to other parts of the world.  Another weekend, I visited Poland, where my friend Maciej was staying with his grandmother.  Hello homemade pierogis and delicious plum dumplings!  I had meal after meal of amazing homemade food, salads of homegrown cucumbers and tomatoes, and delicious sour cream.  We headed out to the countryside for a day, and the first thing we were greeted with was a delicious midnight snack of rye bread, simple cheese, whole tomatoes, and of course shots of polish vodka.

My last night in Freiberg, Germany was spent at the Kartoffelhaus, a restaurant completely dedicated to potatoes, with potatoes in every dish, plates from all over the world, and complimentary glasses of homemade potato schnapps.  Then, it was off to France, the country of la baguette, l’escargot, le croissant and le fromage.

Strasbourg is the capital of Alsace, a region that has been passed from Germany and France for such a long time, that much of its culture is quite of mix of both, yet not quite either.  And the food is the same.  At its heart, Alsatian cuisine is rich and hearty like German food, with a French twist.  We have choucroutes (sauerkraut), bratwurst, boiled potatoes and cooked pork and ham, and Alsace produces most of France’s beer: very German indeed. Alsace is also known for its foie gras and rue de vin that houses many wineries that produce amazing French wine.  And last but not least, a personal favorite, tarte flambée. It consists of thin bread dough rolled out in pizza form, covered in crème fraîche, onions and bacon bits.  Legend has it, the tarte flambée was originally used by Alsatian farmers to test the heat of their wood-fired ovens.  At the perfect heat, the oven could bake a perfect tarte flambee in one or two minutes, allowing the crust to be nearly burned by the flames.  They are available everywhere in Strasbourg and are very addicting.

During the rest of the year, I have had the delight of encountering other small gastronomic traditions, especially around Christmas.  I have already raved about the markets here; the likes of which I had never seen before, and the food was no exception.  Crepes, made on the spot, filled with sugar and nutella on paper plates, chestnuts, roasted by street vendors and sold in rough paper cones, and hundreds of different types of cookies, all locally made.  And at every Christmas Market that I visited, I saw some of the same staples, including vin chaud, delicious, spiced wine, and candied nuts.

Christmas came and went, and I continued my travels.  Next, I hopped on over the pond to England, where I enjoyed delicious, loose-leaf tea, fish and chips, a must, and some of the most amazing Asian food ever.  That was one thing that I really missed in France.  I had grown up on Chinese and Thai, but France, with a large number of its immigrants from Africa and Turkey, specializes in other genres of food.  From my first bite of curry chicken with fried rice, it was like I was back home.  Even as an American, I was surprised at the number of fried chicken and fast food places that crowded the streets of England – aren’t we supposed to be the McDonald’s obsessed ones?  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess…

And finally, we come to la Raclette.  This dish is the reason that I started this article, my inspiration, my muse.  It all started the week before I went on a two-day skiing trip with my university.  During that week, all I heard about the trip was excitement about this mysterious raclette, about how amazing and delicious it was going to be.  I finally got around to asking someone what it was, and I got a long-winded, complex explanation.  “It is an amazing dish, copied from the Swiss.”  “It is delicious, awesome, epic and legendary, and as soon as you eat it, you fall into a food coma,” raved my French friends.  The night of the raclette arrived and I was ready, with an open mind and an empty stomach.

I was not disappointed.  We all sat down at the dining table, which had an odd sort of grill in the middle.  Everyone started to get excited and impatient, and finally, slices of cheese, plates of ham, sausage and prosciutto, and large glass bowls of baked potatoes were brought out and placed in front of us.  We heated up the grill, which had two levels, one on top for the meats to fry on, and one just underneath, with little shovel-like spoons.  The idea is to put a slice of cheese in the spoon, place it in the grill, and let it get nice and warm, until the cheese has completely melted and is mind-blowingly gooey and tasty.  You then pour it on the meat and potatoes and dig in.  It is pure heaven, but then again, melt cheese, pour it on anything and I am there.  So, we spent the evening enjoying the raclette with white wine and each other’s company.  And what they say is right; with a tummy fully of cheese, potatoes and white wine, I was drowsy by 8:00 and in bed by 9:30!  The raclette had done me in.

I have finally started to really appreciate an activity that I spend a good amount of time doing, and I wonder what the rest of the year has in store for me… Escargot? Amazing Moroccan food? Frog Legs?

Stay tuned to find out.