This is my first time participating at Vegan MoFo and I hope it will be a lot of fun.
Here's what I'm going to do for November:
Imagine my kitchen would be a time machine and it is going to sent me back to 1910.
Of course I'm not going to leave my hometown so I'm going to find myself standing in a kitchen inside of an old house somewhere in Düsseldorf, Germany.
These are the rules I am going to follow strictly:
1. No fruit or vegetables or other food, that wasn't available and familar in Düsseldorf in 1910. (Except of things like soy milk, tofu, chickpea flour, vegemite, gluten flour, tvp...., which are used as a substitude for meat or dairy products)
2. I must eat dishes, which the people in 1910 ate all the time, without any excepetions.
3. There are no more than five meals every day. (An early breakfast after I get up in the morning, a second breakfast around 10:00 (if it's a day at university it will be 11:00), lunch at 12:00 or at 13:00 on universitydays, kind of teatime at 16:00, and dinner around 19:00 - 19:30.
4. I am going to save as much money as I can.
5. Just wintervegetables and winterfruit.
There are a few reasons why I'm going to do this project.
The first reason is, that I want to show the regional variety of food in germany in the past, because it seems to die rapidly and quietly.
This is maybe because german kitchen isn't something, that's knwon to be very culinary e and it's supposed to be very fatty and loaded with lots of meat. An other point is, that we germans are having a HUGE problem with our past because of the things, that happened before and during WWII, which resulted into a nationwide cultural identity crisis. If there's something, that's supposed to be tradional most of the germans don't like it because they think it is frumpy.
I kind of agree to this point in some ways because the german kitchen doesn't use much spices and meat and vegetables are often cooked and just fried ocasionally. But on the other hand, there are some great ways to prepare typical german vegetables and extraodinary dishes made of potatoes, which are good quality ones most of the time. Sometimes the taste of a first class deep yellow looking potato combined with some easy cooked spinach will make a meal, that's out of this world. There are also great combinations of sweat, sour and savoury irgredients, like " Himmel un Äd", which consinsts of roughly mashed potatoes with chunks of apples, fried onions and some fried slices of a tradional blood pudding known as "Panhas", that I'm going to veganize during the project.
The second reason, why I am going to do this is because it want to understand what it means to relie on food, that's cheap, local and in season. Normaly I cook dishes from all over the world and I eat fruit and vegetables from far away. Sometimes I even buy asparagus from peru in december or strawberries from egypt in march, because I am so desperate because of all the winterfood. When fall slowly starts I always think, that it is not going to be so hard this year and that I am going to find new ways to prepare all the roots and different kinds of cabbage, that make me happy, but I always fail and end up buying tomatoes and stuff that's not in season. This is going to change during the 1910 project because there won't be the possibillity to use something, that's not in season.
The third and last reason, why I am going to do this is, that I want to introduce you to some nice local celebrations during novmeber.
The most important one will be St. Martin's Day, which has been one of my favourite local celebrations since I was a little boy. An other very local celebration will be the 11th of november because this is the day when carnival (which is also beeing called the 5th season around here) starts officially at 11:11 (the 11.11. at 11:11 isn't this funny^^).
I'll try to post everyday.
The post will consist of pictures and descriprions of the food I had at this day and I will also write about how I feel during the project and feature the recipes of the food.
I also want to introduce you to traditional, local ingredients such as "Mosterd" or "Altbier" and if one of the dishes I am going to eat has been a dish I liked as a child, I will tell you about my memories.
I am also working at two kinds of interview, one that I am going to answer before the project and an other one, that I am going to answer when everything will be over.
