this from rec.food.cooking just a couple of days ago…poor Frank G. was broke, in Germany on a Sunday (where they apparently also do not have grocery on Sundays) and had 30 minutes to make a fab dinner for a date….

SUBJECT: help!

Hi!
Shops are closed today (Germany! – forgot to go shopping yesterday) and
a girlfriend wants to come for a visit in half an hour and I just got:
5 potatoes,
3 onions,
3 tomatoes,
a citron,
3 apples,
3/4 cucumber,
1/2 camembert,
a tin of sardines,
1/3 package spiral pasta and half a package of sweet cream.
Also some sweet mustard, butter, olive oil, some herbs and spices.
Any idea?
Thanx
–
Frank G

Luckily for Frank, within a few minutes a fellow netizen posted:

Boil pasta
Saute onions in oil, add sardines, some of the cream and some herbs,
perhaps some mustard.
Toss pasta in onion/sardine/cream sauce.
Plate pasta.
Dice tomatoes, strew on top of pasta.

For dessert, bake apples with some shredded citron, butter, sugar and
spice; top with remaining cream.

In the end all worked out great for Frank!

Just wanted to say ‘Thank You!’ for your help yesterday evening (UTC+1).
In the end we were cooking together!
Your ideas inspired us for the following dinner:

Salad:
Tomatoes, cucumber and camembert with a vinaigrette made of white
balsamico, mustard, salt, coloured pepper, dill, parsley and olive oil.
On top some diced toast fried in butter.

Pasta:
In butter sauted onions, salt, white pepper, thymian, honey and sweet
cream with the spiral pasta plated. On top breaded and fried sardines.
Decorated with a piece of citron and parsley.

Dessert:
‘S Viemeister’s baked apples’ filled with raisins, honey and butter,
some citron and cinnamon. There was no cream left, so we served it with
some cherry jam.

First we had some pinot grigio and later mocca and cognac
In the end it was a nice evening!!!

Thank you!
(Need to go shopping now…)

Head over to rec.food.cooking to see what else happened to Frank and to engage in the very active conversation about “Weird food laws”. It never occurred to me that Germany had no grocery shopping on Sundays…

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