I know it’s not everyone’s idea of fun but grocery shopping is one of mine. And grocery shopping in a foreign county is even funner. On the other hand when you are going to make something like, say, green chicken chili and it requires mild green chiles, finding them in a German grocery store can be something of a challenge because beyond my inability to understand what I am looking at, these are not something most Germans even know about and while between my broken German and the store clerk’s broken English I was able to communicate something that I hope sounded like “green vegetable mexican,” what he came up with was fresh jalapeños which was a great guess but not really what I wanted at all obviously. He was very proud to have, he thought, found what I wanted but clearly they were not at all what I’d wanted and then I had to explain to him in my broken German which, I hope, did not sound like “Are you out of your mind? Not this!” Just kidding, I would never be able to say that in German.
I ended up making red chicken chili. Except that it was nothing at all like chili. Even though I’d brought a pound of Spice House chili powder from the US. More on that catastrophe as we continue.
