Cake Hour Cackle: Staving off dementia

Where's the cake? I don't see a cake. Do you see a cake??

There was no cake today. Whereas cake time or Kaffee und Kuchen (Coffee and Cake) is a well regarded part of German life it probably doesn't beat beer and wurst. Today's surprise was that cake hour featured the latter. Today the carbos came from the beverage of beer and our protein from the hot dogs. This was actually a rebirth of beer Friday which took place several years ago when through some phenomenon that we still don't understand about 19 undergraduate students were accepted into the summer program. Apparently they couldn't tolerate being in an area where the study of the effects of alcohol consumption took place without feeling compelled to fully participate in the project by consuming some alcohol themselves.

Bringing back beer Fridays!

Once they departed and our sanity returned we went back to sweets but in a nod to the hotter weather and the expired tradition a few opted to bring back the beer and off we went. There was a good selection including an organic Bavarian brew and Clausthaler non-alcoholic beer for the youngsters. There were some wheat beers and even a Sam Adams Brewery version of Kölsch which is a beverage served in the city of Köln aka Cologne in Germany. We don't have a good frame of reference so we can't really judge the latter.

The full menui and no cake in sight!

Chips and salsa!

A sample plate is prepared

A fine beer display

Quite a selection too!

To complement the brewskis our hosts featured some chips and salsa and hot dogs. Given some of the research done here the dogs offered were Oscar Meyer nitrate/nitrosamine free. It seems that nitrosamines have been implicated in dementia and/or Alzheimer's disease. How nice that we were able to eat our wieners without worry. They were very good and so it now begs the question what are the nitrosamines good for if they can taste just fine without them. We'll be looking for more of these nitrosamine free products hitting the shelves.

Tasty hot dogs and we won't be demented!

No dementia for me either!

Enjoying the scene he helped create!

All the students in one place!

We can have our wurst and eat it too!

The pseudo beer bash was well attended and the new summer crew were happy to attend. What is it about these students that prompt them to always sit together in a clump. Peer pressure? Trying to fit it? Disinterest in other age groups? Who knows but it happened here and it is likely it is going to happen again.