Britta's Letters from her life divided between city-life in German's capital Berlin and life in a Bavarian village

Sunday 12 July 2020

Danish Pastry



Dear You,

today only a short letter from Yours Truly. 
See the little Danish pastry - I walk an extra mile to get them from that baker, have to choose between three different fillings, cherry is very tasty too, as good as this vanilla pud with tangerine - so let's take them all.

I send you the photo because on the plate (which I love dearly - have only two left) the pastries are so tiny - that reminds me of the smaller scale most things were in the past.

Nowadays the cookies have the size of a cow pat - the popcorn comes in huge buckets, size of an elephant foot, and many people swell like balloons.

Take as many of these little delicacies as you want (a man needs at least three), there are more if you wish - but just stop a minute before you take the next - you don't have to scrape your plate obligingly just to make the sun shine tomorrow (that's what the told us when I was a child - a plate not cleaned meant rain tomorrow).

Enjoy your sunny Sunday!

Yours Truly
Britta




20 comments:

  1. I was out at a favourite restaurant last night. My plate was returned perfectly clean.... I now see where I'm going wrong; no rain in sight!

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  2. Hahaha, so we should have listend to our parents...

    In a French restaurant - and the good ones in Berlin too - they dwell in diversification
    : many different items, so lovely that I clean my plate too :-)
    (What I hate are those "All you can eat"-offers, though I admit they might be great for ever-hungry 15 year old boys).

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  3. I find it quite hard to copew ith cakes and cow pats in the same sentence. But I get what you mean. In Portugal cakes are super tiny and delicious and one is never enough. I like your little plate too. xx

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  4. I love those little pasteis de Nata, Rachel! At the university we have a little Portugeese restaurant, we always go there...
    I meant cookies the size of the unspeakable, and not cakes, and these huge things I find really revolting. :-). Xx

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    1. Cookies isn't a word I am familiar with. It is not British. We have cakes, little cakes, big cakes, and pastries. But we don't have cookies.

      I use the Portuguese cafés around here but the best pastries I had of all were in a café in Lisbon.

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    2. No, you are right, Rachel: "cookie" is of (though debatable) Scottish origin. And most of my followers are Americans - so at least they might understand :-)

      "cookie (n.)
      1730, Scottish, but the sense is"plain bun," and it is debatable whether it is the same word; in the sense of "small, flat, sweet cake" by 1808 (American English); this use is from Dutch koekje "little cake," diminutive of koek "cake," from Middle Dutch koke (see cake (n.)). "Dutch influence is no doubt responsible also for the parallel use of the word in South African English" [Ayto, "Diner's Dictionary"].

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    3. I consider it to be American and it means nothing to me and if asked I might have said it was a biscuit.

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  5. The best little pastries I had were served for breakfast in a hotel in Madrid. Coffee was good too.

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    1. So lovely sitting there, breakfast served, sunshine (well, and all that without the C-word) : heaven!

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  6. I never heard about rain if I didn't clean my plate. It was always about the starving children in some other part of the world. The pastry looks heavenly.

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    1. The topic of the "starving children" is known in Germany too, Emma.
      I think nowadays the education in eating and food is (hopefully) better - though I wonder about the poor kids who are raised on fast-food . The helicopter mothers with"everything healthy" are difficult too.

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  7. What a beautiful little pastry! Not the same, but on the tiny scale, I get cream puffs from a little Italian bakery near me.

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    1. Mmmmh, yummy, Joanne - cream puffs sound delicious! In Venice we got them too, the tiny version -- here the cream puffs are really big.

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  8. Oh Britta ..... I love Danish pastries but don’t eat them very often .... need to be careful at my age !!!! Apricot and almond are my favourite .... yours are the perfect size and look so pretty on your lovely plate.
    I’m afraid that I usually eat EVERYTHING on my plate !!! I think it’s manners to leave a little something but I can’t 🤣 XXXX

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    1. Dear Jackie, I also do not eat Danish pastries, or cakes or cookies very often - they are just "a treat". Apricot: so lovely, sweet with a little hinge of sour, mmmh!
      Nowadays most of the time I clear my plate too, the big difference is: I "help myself", meaning I choose what and how much I put on my plate (at least concerning the food :-) XXXX

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  9. That looks delicious! Pudding and tangerine sounds pretty divine ... In my home we were always reminded of the "poor starving Biafrans", whereas the kids next door had to "leave something for Miss Manners", but really, serving sizes were so much smaller that to leave something behind would have been hard. You only have to look at the dimensions of vintage cookware and plates & wine glasses to see how crazy it's become. And 30s characters like Nick & Nora would polish off 3 martinis before deciding what to do for the evening whereas today 3 martinis would only lead directly to unconsciousness!

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    1. Yes, Pipistrello, I remember those parental references too -- by the way: where has Miss Manners moved too? She should establish a school here in Berlin!
      And the vintage cookware - I have beautiful glasses from around 1870: tiny, really tiny for red wine. Then the glasses I got from my parents: wine glasses of the Fifties: a decent size. Now you have those huge balloons - (I know: good for - forgive me the pun - the "Bouquet" - but glasses like "Bucket"(s) -- as Hyacinth would say).
      I always admire Nick&Nora, so much fun, so stylish - together with Miss Manners cocktails and martinis seem to have disappeared too. For me the three olives in three martinis would make me see everything -- in another light ---hicks.

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  10. The pastry looks delicious and pretty on your plate.

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  11. Yes, Terra, they looked pretty - now they are eaten... :-).
    High time to write a new post!

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