Round of 16, Day 1 - Germany - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

I kind of love how things don't always play out the way you want. I was really hoping for an easy day Saturday. Instead I was choosing between Germany and Cameroon - a county I had really ambitious plans for and one I knew nothing about it. Saturday Dan and I were going to be at the County Fair since we were doing a race there so I was really hoping to get USA. On top of all of that, I had to take an unexpected trip out of town the two days before and couldn't plan any shopping.

All of that really just took it out of me. Part of me kind of wanted to skip this day or round or maybe just quit the challenge all together. But that's the thing about challenges - when things are the most challenging, that's when you need to keep going. 

So I decided to go with an easy option that would allow me to get this done without causing anymore trouble than I could handle. I knew I had some brats in the freezer. While Dan drove us home from the fair, I looked up pretzel recipes. I found one that used ingredients I already had. I already had bought a German beer so I knew I had enough to make a basic Bavarian meal.

I also have a paleo bread cookbook that I knew would have a pretzel recipe. The book is amazing for making breads that taste like the real thing. The only problem is this usually requires a crazy mix of flours. I have A LOT of paleo ingredients in my pantry but I just didn't have all of the flours needed for the pretzels.

I'm going to be totally honest here. I did not like the pretzels at all. Dan liked them but admitted they didn't taste at all like pretzels. I think we agreed they were more like pretzel shaped coconut flour poop. Sounds awesome, right? But yea - I'm not a huge fan of the coconut flour texture. These just seemed to take all of the extra dry and graininess of the coconut flour and magnify it. 

The brats and beer were great though! I really like Johnsonville brats and we get the big box of them from Costco. I'm not sure if they are actually Paleo but they make a great breakfast or dinner in a pinch.

I really wanted to get a nice German wine but I didn't see any Reisling or Gewurztraminer from Germany at Bevmo. These wines are pretty common but the style is really different in the US and Germany so I didn't think it would be authentic to get an alternative one. 

I opted instead for beer. 

There are tons of German beers but I decided to go with the Hacker-Pschorr because that was the most fun tent when I went to Oktoberfest. Speaking of - it wouldn't be German beer if I didn't enjoy it in my Oktoberfest mug!!

Mmmm beeerrrrr