I had pig’s stomach for dinner last night! It’s called pänzier. It looked like a large sausage with little pieces of potato and seasonings inside. Normally you would cook it in the oven while soaking it in beer, but pan-frying with oil also works. Pänzier is a traditional food from the region of Moselle, between Alsace and Lorraine. So here’s the story. While interviewing people for my research questions about Alsace, I met Louis, who’s from Moselle. He’s a student teacher in one of my classes at the university. I didn’t even know what Moselle was until I talked to him! He drew me a map and everything—he’s very knowledgeable about France and he’s a polyglot. Anyway, I asked about traditional foods in and around Alsace, and he mentioned pänzier to me. You can’t find it in restaurants, and not many butchers sell it. His grandparents had a butcher shop in the past, so they knew where to get good pänzier. He picked some up from his grandparents’ and asked me to come over for some pänzier for dinner! Knowing I would never get such an opportunity to eat pig’s stomach again, I accepted the invitation. Sama and Louis’s boyfriend came too. We met near the university and took the tram to Louis’s dorm. On the way we stopped at Auchan, one of my favorite cheap grocery stores in Europe. We picked up drinks and dessert. Sama picked coke, and I picked apricot juice! Just because I can’t find such fun fruit juices in the United States. Am I just not looking in the right places though??? And for dessert, we bought vanilla yogurt, a typical food French people eat as dessert. I kept the jars from the yogurt because aside from being the creamiest, most delicious yogurt I’ve ever had, the jars were like clay or something, so of course they couldn’t be thrown away 😊 Dinner was fun, typical “college-style” dining! We ate at Louis’s desk, because dorms are small, and we used mismatched chairs and recyclable plastic ice cream cartons for chip bowls. He did have nice plates though, which is more than I can say for my dorm back at Susquehanna! Before the pänzier was served, we had the French “apéritif”—chips and pistachios (any little snack foods) with our drinks. Some of you reading this know what scrapple is, and I figured pig’s stomach couldn’t be any worse than that (and I like scrapple). I was right—even though pänzier is nothing like scrapple, it was good. Not weird at all. Pretty much just like sausage. I’d eat it again for sure, though I don’t think it’s very healthy… Everyone knows that when you go to a new place you should try something new, or at least whatever the traditional food is. And that’s totally true—even if thinking of “pig’s stomach” makes your stomach churn, give it a try if you’re in the region of Moselle! You’ll probably meet some interesting people and learn a thing or two along the way. P.S. You know something other than people that I miss from home? Screens in the windows. I don’t think they even exist here! Which is fine except when I want my window open at night and I don’t want bugs to come in. Or bats for that matter! :p Bye for now, Elda
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AuthorHello! I'm Elda, a French/Anthropology major and Applied Language Studies minor studying in Strasbourg for a semester. Archives
May 2019
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