How Germans Eat

Recently, I had a very busy day and by four o'clock hadn't had any time to run out to the grocery store to get food to make dinner. Of course I had nothing in the house, and to complicate matters, my Baba called me and told me she made spaghetti for me. The reason why this complicated matters was that I'm still afraid to eat dinner at her house. She thaws meat on the counter top and uses the same cutting board for raw meat and raw veggies. She has always done this, and has never ever gotten sick. I have eaten her food all of my life (until I came down with this phobia) and I also have never ever gotten sick. So, I was faced with this serious dilemma--drive 10 minutes to my Baba's house and eat spaghetti that is already cooked and waiting for me, or figure out what to cook, go to the grocery store, buy the food, come home and cook it, then finally eat, 2 hours later. I decided that it would be good for my phobia if I used "exposure therapy" on myself and ate dinner at Baba's. First, I got the opinion of two different people regarding whether or not they thought it was safe to eat the spaghetti. Then, I headed over to Baba's.

The spaghetti tasted GREAT. Even so, I played with my food for a bit, and took tiny bites, so that if I were to get sick, I would get LESS sick than if I had eaten the entire dish. I also moved the food around on the plate so that it looked like I ate most of it. My Baba sat down across from me, and said, "You know Svitlana? Germans would never eat like that. This is what they do." And she took the fork out of my hand, scraped all the food on my plate into a big pile, and said, "You have to eat this."

The spaghetti sat in my stomach like a lump for the rest of the evening. Was it because it was greasy? Or, was it just my anxiety? This is why I prefer to eat bread, soups, and kashas.