Grocery Shopping in Detmold: No Costco here!

 We have discovered that we need to plan for several hours to get our weekly groceries. We love the outdoor markets in the town square here in Detmold. The food is fresh and high quality. We are finding the best green grapes we have ever had from our new friend at the produce tables. We learned her grapes come from Italy! We are going through them so fast I think she gets a good laugh at us!

We buy salmon from Norway here at the fish kiosk. 

The grapes are huge and so sweet and the blueberries are perfect...not sure where they come from.

The variety is overwhelming and always looks so good. The market sets up for a few hours about lunch time every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Most people come for just a few items at a time, but with our work schedule, when we buy fish we need to get it to our fridge quickly. So, we buy our fish on Saturdays. We drive from our apartment in Hiddesen and park at the archive and walk from there. Parking in the little village is often problematic so we are grateful we have permission to use the archive parking on the weekend.

But during the week we will make another trip to the market to buy grapes!

Obviously this photo was taken during a cold snap. Winter is just around the corner. 

Of course, the Saturday grocery trip includes multiple places. There are a couple of nice grocery stores, Kaufland and Combi where we got for milk, eggs, and other items. Right now there are huge displays of Christmas candy. 

Ed standing in line to check out. The clerks are all in little cages at Kaufland. Also, there are no free bags, people bring their own carts or bags to gather their groceries in. 

Bakeries are the best here. We had always heard about the bread in Germany...lot's of sandwiches eaten here. 

We have our favorite bread kiosk. Ed has a become a favorite of the women at this place. We love their brown bread with lots of seeds. The only problem for us is that the bread is made without preservatives so it does not stay for very long before beginning to mildew in the humid air here. We usually buy half a loaf at a time and have them cut it in very thin slices for us. 

There are some challenges for me in Germany with regard to food... first, there are no chocolate chips in this country! Second, all baking ingredients are a little bit different so anything you try to bake comes out differently too. Flour is different, sugar is different and trying to find baking powder and baking soda is a real challenge.

One thing that we have loved eating here is bratwurst and french fries. We have one special place, an outdoor place where we eat once a week. It is delicious. We love the fries because they are not at all greasy. Surprisingly, the bratwurst is not at all greasy either. We with our fingers and don't have anything on our fingers. They are so good!!

Isn't he so cute? 

I think it is funny that they serve the bratwurst on a flat little tray with mustard on the tray and a roll and a napkin. But they serve a little tiny wooden fork with the french fries to eat with. They will serve fries with either catsup or mayo or both on the top. We on get the catsup. 

It is a good quick meal but with winter we are not sure if it will be possible for us to stand out in the cold and eat like this for a while. We will see what happens.