this morning for breakfast we had authentic german pumpernickel. i received this in the post on friday, from florian, a food blogger in hamburg.

this was part of a parcel full of german goodies, that florian sent to me as part of european blogging by post. this is a food bloggers' event where you send, and receive a parcel from someone else who has a food blog. the match-making and all other arrangements were done by johanna at the passionate cook.

so, what was in the parcel apart from the pumpernickel?

florian was determined i didn’t go thirsty and sent me bottles of astra (the beer from hamburg apparently), holsten alsterwasser (shandy - beer mixed with lemonade - named after hamburg’s lake alster) and bionade (a new local organic non-alcoholic drink; i’m not sure if this is a beer but will no doubt be finding out soon!).

there was plenty of food too! obviously we had some of the famous german black bread, pumpernickel, which we enjoyed with scottish smoked salmon and cream cheese – delicious! other savoury additions were a packet of currywurst mix (we had currywurst when we visited berlin last december, perhaps a german supper to mark the anniversary of our visit would be appropriate) and a tin of labskaus.

to be honest, the labskaus scares me a little. traditionally it’s a favourite dish amongst sailors and means "meal for a rough customer"! it is made with potatoes, corned beef, beetroot and pickles. it should be served warm with a fried egg and pickled herrings. looking at florian’s blog it seems that this is a delicacy he has only just tried and it appears to be an acquired taste… i think i’ll need to be feeling brave when i try this!

the rest of the parcel was full of sweet treats – marzipan kartoffeln (florian bought these as the cold weather is invoking thoughts of christmas), kemm’sche kuchen (biscuits), cherry lollipops (a childhood favourite of florian’s) and a packet of raspberry jelly powder, which will take me back to my childhood.

the final packets contained some homemade chocolate cookies, with vanilla and coffee fillings. these disappeared very quickly after supper last night!

thank you florian for such a wonderful and varied parcel and thank you johanna for arranging everything. if you want to see the parcel i sent, visit lexi’s blog and visit the passionate cook for a round-up of all the parcels.