Our New Best Friend

We have named him "Sam."

Sam is the owner of the butchery here in town, a little piece of heaven called Raisch Metzgerei.

We decided to go back to "Sam's" after we had those fabulous steaks on opening day of grilling season. The next visit was a total meat challenge. We wanted to know how Sam's hamburger rated against the stuff we usually buy at the grocery on base.

I decided the best way to tell any differences was to make spaghetti and meatballs. Well, let me tell ya...the differences were noticed immediately - I didn't even need to eat any to tell that this was going to be far superior than anything we can buy prepackaged.

The story starts with Terry's excursion to buy the hamburger. He packed up Trevor in the stroller and took a walk into town. When he got there, he looked in the cases with no meat in sight ... lots of other meats, not what we were after.

He asks the lady behind the counter and she calls out "Sam." Terry inquires about getting a kilo (2 pounds) of hamburger and "Sam" says no problem. He goes behind behind the counter and cuts off some beef ... before Terry's astounded eyes, "Sam" grinds it fresh right there...(our friend Claudia informed us that this is law in butcheries...they cannot have day old hamburger so it is required that they make it fresh...humm)

So, I start preparing my secret recipe for meatballs and notice that the color is much lighter, the consistency is much lighter and not nearly as greasy as American burger seems. I wonder if I need to alter my recipe to cater to the new meat, but I decide to do the normal thing.

They browned up lighter with almost no fat residue in my pan. They didn't take as long to cook as normal and when we finally had them for supper...oh man! Oh Man! OH MAN! They were lighter in taste, consistency ... we ate less and felt better.

"Sam" has totally sold us on fresh ground beef...there isn't anything better and I challenge you to find anything better out there......OH MAN! We love German Butcheries!