One of my favorite German words is “Stulle”. I have had endless discussions with students about its meaning because every region uses different words or varies the meaning slightly. In my region “Stulle” is used for both a slice of bread and an open sandwich.

I usually eat it for breakfast and dinner, while I have a warm lunch at work. This has become a lot harder since I moved away from Germany. In Turkey as well as in the U.S. people prefer a warm dinner and I often get easily swept away by the idea of eating another warm meal. On the other hand, I know that I don’t need two big meals a day. Living in the U.S. is definitely hard when it comes to not gaining any weight. I still think portions in restaurants are usually much bigger than in Europe. But I also noticed at one point that I quickly reached for all those delicious frozen foods like pancakes, waffles, corndogs (ok, I know that most of you wouldn’t call the last one delicious, but I like sausages on a stick) … plus I definitely walk much less since I bought my car.

Eventually I had to reconsider my eating habits (that or shopping clothes in a bigger size) and so I came back to eating more open sandwiches again. And while my favorites will always be the ones with just a slice of cheese, I sometimes vary them because even I get bored after two weeks of Stulle with swiss cheese on top. My second favorite topping is avocado which works really well here since I consider avocado toast a great American invention. Normally I just toast a slice of sourdough bread in the oven and spread the raw avocado on the warm bread. But every now and then I try different variations of avocado toast, like these three:

For avocado toast no. 1, add some cocktail tomatoes, crumbled feta, thyme and balsamic glaze.

Some scrambled eggs and red pepper flakes make avocado toast no. 2 delicious.

The last version of avocado toast is sweet: Put walnut pieces and dried cranberries on it. Sprinkle it with maple sirup.

© janavar

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