Good things that come in the mail: Oatmeal, German Schinken & Kirsch-laced Cherries
This year, as I have noted in multiple locations, I have been working my way through Mimi Sheraton’s 1,000 Foods to Eat Before you Die book. With that journey I have added a few new food ordering websites to may already abundant favorite websites. What to try something new or get a difficult ingredient, give one of these a try….
Need quality granola? The kind of granola that you can serve to company or feel totally pampered. Not the grocery store variety granola? Try Oakbox. They ship two different bags of granola per month, with the option to skip a month or change to another type of of granola (but why as they are all AMAZING). Even better, they come with interesting recipes for to play around with… I find it difficult to even get to the recipes as I rip the bags open first day and they are usually gone by the next week. What I love are the unique flavor combinations and the fact that they don’t over toast the ingredients which I often find tastes burnt. No burnt granola from Oaktree.
I love getting a box of new ingredients each month and two companies are head and shoulders about the rest (in my opinion). The first is Try The World. Try the World’s boxes focus on one country per month with come with great descriptions on how to use the items including sample recipes. Company number two is is Yummy Bazaar. Yummy 
Bazar has a variety of subscription boxes and bring food samples from a variety of countries to your door each month. I go with the least expensive option but drool looking at the more expensive version each month. Both of these companies allow you to purchase full-sized products. These are great resources for hard-to-find items.- This summer my friends and I spent most Sunday’s getting together at Second Chance Brewery which allows you to bring in your own food items. We spent most of the summer trying items from my 1,000 things food list. One of the items listed was Schlachtplatter which is a german meat platter using a variety of
Schinken’s or hams. In trying to find these items as well as other German items such as Sulze which is pictured at the beginning of this post, I turned to a new company called Bavarian Sausage Company. They are located in Wisconsin, which makes sense given that all of my German immigrant relatives ended up in Wisconsin and much of the state has strong Germanic roots. If you google German Ham, you will find that they have very distinctive varieties. This company is happy to split an order so you can try all of them (Blackforest, 
Westphalian, “Salmon”, Nut, or Bacan. We did not agree on which was the tastiest. My favorite? Nussschinken (Nut ham). Just a quick tip, schinken is salt cured and it will be salty so it is recommended to eat with a non-salty cheese (like the creole cream cheese that I have 
described in my post on cheese) or with unsalted butter. My most favorite way to eat schinken? Chop finally and put into scrambled eggs. - Finally, i had numerous french items i have tried, w/o luck to procure on my go to site like Amazon.com I stumbled upon Le Panier Francais. One of my most favorite purchases?
Griottines which are very small cherries in kirsch. I know that they can’t ACTUALLY have crack cocaine in them but they do seem about as addictive as crack. When you buy a jar, you might want to try them in private to determine if you love anyone enough to share. I am not sure that I do but I have still shared A FEW with friends. VERY good friends.
