Friday, February 02, 2007

Healthy Choice Cheddar-Filled Sausage

Well, it's that time again, kiddies. No, not Super Bowl. Time for me to kill time by blogging. Yep, every couple of months I wind up teaching for half a day and need to kill anywhere between an hour to two and a half. Today was two and a half. So being in Carson and having never been 4 minutes away to Alpine Village, off I went. I don't know about you, but I feel sometimes, being American and all, that I'm a cultural chameleon. If I'm around Italians, I feel Italian; around Germans, German; around Vietnamese... well, American. I felt very German today.

Alpine Village is everything that Pea Soup Andersen's is not. It's an Inn, not a crappy Best Western. It's a deli, not a crappy gift shop. It's a cafe, not a crappy... well, actually the restaurant isn't that bad, but you get my meaning. Alpine Village is all about Germans helping Germans. The deli had fresh sausage hanging from hooks, sitting in the case, asking you to do the right thing. There were old women behind the counter speaking German. There were old women in front of the counter speaking German. I ate at the cafe - this time, literally short for cafeteria (trays and everything) - and had Goulash for the first time and listened to four old German men play dice. It was wonderful. From the deli, I purchased two packages of non-traditional Jalapeno (sorry, no tilde) and Cheddar Sausage, and two packages of Smoked German Bratwurst for Super Bowl with the in-laws-to-be. The Jalapeno/Cheddar was at the recommendation of my good friend, and food know-it-all, Hung Pham (not that one, the other one). I don't know how a Vietnamese import gets to German Heaven-On-Earth before me, but it never fails, he has always been there (where-ever that is) and tried the food.

So now I'm back in this classroom waiting for the clock to move so I can go home and refridgerate my day's haul. Super Bowl will be great even if the Bears lose, thanks to Brat.
If you never hear from me again, know that I died satiated and smiling, with half a sausage hanging out of my mouth, a half-drunk beer next to me, and cheese on my chin.


In other news, I finished Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, and it was great. So there.

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