Quote:
Originally Posted by 919191
What is Goetta?
|
Goetta- it's a funny thing. We have a family recipe for it, but my own relatives in Germany have never heard of the stuff. Basically, it's oats, onions, ground pork and ground beef. Our family recipe includes cloves, which makes it taste quite a bit different than what you'll get from Glier's or any of the dozens of butcher shops in town that make their own.
Anyway, about it's origins. Goetta is an evolved form of the low German word for grains and meat (götte). However, as I said, Germans don't eat the stuff. My own theory is that Goetta is actually a twist on
Irish Pudding, made by German housewives for their Irish immigrant husbands in Cincinnati. I have tasted White Irish Pudding and it tastes an awful lot like Avril's or Humbert's Goetta. That certainly would explain a lot about our own recipe- my Cincinnati ancestors are German/Irish.
What do I miss about Cincinnati?
Knowing everyone
I grew up on the West Side and making friends was never an issue. And if you needed a plumber, you could always use the grapevine to find someone reliable. Or a mechanic, or a carpenter. I need something done now and I feel like I am at the mercy of crooks.
Family
Not only did I know everyone, I think I was related to half of them. And we all pretty much got along and hung out together. The only question about what to do on the weekend was "which relative should we invite over?" Invariably it would be many of them.
Church Festivals
I spent two summers delivering Edelmann's brats and metts to church festivals. I was treated like a conquering hero, only surpassed in importance by the guy with the Hudepohl truck.
High Quality Softball
The game just doesn't exist anywhere else like it does in Cincinnati.
Childhood
I grew up playing baseball at Boldface Park, going to the Fire Department Fish Fry in the Del Fair parking lot and the July 4th festival at Delhi Park. I knew all my cousins and second cousins and great aunts and uncles. I got spanked by a neighbor down the street for being a smart alec and that was just fine by my mom. I rode my bike everywhere. And I went to Reds games. Lots and lots of Reds games. I dreamed about playing baseball every night. In the seventies, there was not a better place on earth for a scrawny baseball rat to be than Cincinnati.
Marty and Joe
Sitting on the back porch at our house with my dad (drinking a 14K) on a hot as hell Saturday afternoon, listening to Marty and Joe.