Vegetable Fat and "Spiritus"
Angelika There is another funny story about everyday things: We planned to have a fondue dinner on the evening of my birthday, as it is kind of a tradition with us. We assumed that this would not lead to any problems, but it did. So, we wanted to buy some high heat fat. Most of the fats being sold here are either fat-reduced or even fat-free (I have no clue how Americans do this). You just can’t heat it enough. So what’s the plan? I finally asked my friend Sylvia who has been living in the U.S. for a while for some advice. She told me to get "Crisco", a vegetable fat that we would find in the baking department of stores.
Moreover, she explained to us that there is no "Spiritus" (high percentage denaturated flammable alcohol) for fondue burners in the U.S., but only a so-called "cooking fuel" that looks like a charcoal lighter fluid. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any. Well, we had already bought the meat and the other fondue ingredients. So we moved both our stove and the dining table into the center of the kitchen, and put the fondue-pan on the stove. It obviously wasn’t very romantic, but pretty funny.
So what else have we done over the past six weeks?
Thanks to Boris Kleinbach, kleinbach@ymail.com for translating the original German text to English.