Food Merchandise to Sell at Holiday Fairs Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Food Merchandise to Sell at Holiday Fairs by Suggested Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Gourmet and favorite food items in small sizes are fun to receive as gifts for:

-stocking stuffers at Christmas

-shoe stuffers (traditional German Christmas)

-Chinese New Year’s in February and Vietnamese Têt

-Corporate gifts for end-of-year cleanest and most organized cubbie contests

The items I would suggest selling at Holiday Fair include:

-Hungarian paprika

-Sea salt

-Tellicherry pepper to grind

-Fish seasoning with lemon peel to grind in a bottle

-Various nuts such as cashews, almonds, and macadamia nuts

-dried fruits

-dried mushrooms

-canned mushrooms

-smoked salmon

-herrings

-smoked sardines

-smoked mackerel

-pumpernickel bread loaves

-V8 vegetable juice

-Dried apricots

-Dried cherries

-Canned tomato sauce

-Pear cider

-Apple cider

-Unsweetened pumpkin puree

-California canned black olives

-Dole Pineapple chunks or rings

-Canned tangerine sections

-Orange-blossom water – you can make this in California or Florida

-Sriracha – Thai hot sauce – made in California

-Shin Black mushroom noodles – vegan, spicy instant noodles made in California

-Vegetable oil for popping homemade popcorn

-Corn kernals

-Applesauce

-Lemonade in aluminum can or plastic jugs – USDA approved

-Valrhona chocolate powder

-Bottled white asparagus tips

-Bottled braised red cabbage

-Bottled sauerkraut

-Lipton Green tea

-Red Rose black tea

-Abuelita or Ibarra chocolate for hot cocoa

-Oatmeal

-Raisins in small packages

-Spinach pasta

-Egg pasta

-Tomato pasta

-Instant plain couscous

-Bottled Lemon Juice

-Mexican vanilla

-Basmati rice

-Italian herbs in large sizes

-Black raspberries in cans to make blackberry jam

-Cornmeal

-Pimentos – bottled red pepper slices – my great-aunt used these in cheese bread

-Scone mix or muffin mix that just requires water and/or oil (Jiffy muffin mixes were like this in the past.)

-Cholula hot sauce for eggs and potatoes or Tobasco

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Oktoberfest Food Ideas for the US Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Oktoberfest Food Ideas for the US Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Planning Notes for Oktoberfest

When I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for 5 years, I did not attend Oktoberfest held in Munich, but did love the great selection of beers from around Germany that would take over the Edeka Supermarket where my husband Laurent and I shopped on the weekends.

Oktoberfest is held at the end of September and the beginning of October.  Libraries have reference books on the history of the event.  You can obtain information in the library or from a “Ask a Librarian” feature on your library’s website usually.  I am more interested in food and drink for the event here.

Some of my favorite beers in their wheat variety from Munich for Oktoberfest included:

-Fraziskaner

-Späten

-Optimator

Beer manufacturing began in ancient Egypt.  Its production in Germany is equally long-lived.  In the Renaissance, the Reinheitsgebot – Beer Purity Production Law – was promulgated that established the 3 ingredients for beer.  Like wine production, what you do with those 3 elements can vary greatly:

-water

-hops – gives beer its bitter edge

-barley

Sometimes wheat is substituted for barley.  When this happens, the word “hefe” for “wheat” clearly appears on the bottle.

I did not buy a drndil frock for Oktoberfest, but my husband Laurent and I celebrated 2 days out of the two-week period.

On one day, we went to Munich and visited the Science and Technology Museum and visited the computer and math galleries.  After visiting the museum, we ate large, freshly baked, soft pretzels and weisswurst with wheat beer in a nice restaurant by the Iser River. 

After lunch, we walked along the Iser on a blustery day when wind was blowing down from the Alps.  Brrr!  The drive home felt like the Nutcracker with the hoar frost hanging from tree branches.

At home on the last weekend of Oktoberfest, I had an indoor, counter grill from Italy that I used to grill bratwurst – the traditional food of Oktoberfest.  We ate large, soft pretzels with sea salt with the brats and drank Fransikaner beer.

I read in the November 2018 issue of Midwest Living that there are 4 types of bratwurst, which I have briefly described below. 

(That magazine – Midwest Living - also had an easy recipe for cheese fondue with several savory dipping suggestions that include pumpernickel bread cubes, steamed Brussels Sprouts, steamed broccoli, and apple slices among others and Martina McBride’s Holiday Recipe’s 2018 had a recipe for beer – cheese soup that looked great, too.)

Bratwurst Types

The bratwurst with cheese in it is a specialty of Wisconsin.

The basic 4 types of bratwurst from Munich are categorized as follows according to Midwest Living:

Bratwurst

Grilled pork and beef sausage served with sweet, German mustard such as Handlmaier

Bockwurst

Frankfurters that resemble curved American hot dogs.  Bockwurst is made with pork mostly and is served with sweet German mustard.  They taste fine with any kind of beer.

Weisswurst

Weisswurst is made with veal and pork.  I boil these rather than grill them.  I think these taste fine with Riesling or a wheat beer.

Liverwurst

Liverwurst is spreadable meat made with pork and pork products.

My father made me crackers with liverwurst as a child as an after-school snack. 

I vividly remember going on a camping trip to Glacier National Park with him as a child, because all we had to eat were liverwurst sandwiches and apple cider or prune juice on the way out there. 

(I counted prairie dogs on the way there with tick marks as entertainment through the Dakotas and all the way to the Western side of Montana.)

Oktoberfest Buffet Ideas for the Home

You could make a small Oktoberfest buffet for children with the different kinds of brats, rotkohl (braised red cabbage), sauerkraut, and Parker roll type-buns.

Set out the Handlmaier sweet mustard, and serve pear cider and apple cider for children as well as apfelstrudel (apple strudel with golden raisins – Sultanas and dark raisins) for dessert. 

Munich is close to Austria, so restaurants serve food that is similar to that of Austria.

Happy Holidays!!!

Note: Wienerschnitzel Drive-thru in Salinas has bratwurst - near Nob Hill Supermarket.  Nob Hill carries German beer and Gerolsteiner water.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

15 Board Games for Holiday Fairs Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

15 Board Games for Holiday Fairs Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I played these games as a child with my cousins in Wisconsin.

1-Mouse Trap

2-Connect 4

3-Candy Land

4-Battleship

5-Clue

6-Uno Card Game

7-Cribbage Card Game and Board

8-Jenga

9-Sorry

10-Pictionary

11-Trivial Pursuit

12-Parchesi

13-Pick-Up Sticks

14-Monopoly

15-Checkers

Happy Holidays!!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

25+ Christmas Activities Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

25+ Christmas Fair Activities Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sell books related to these activities outside the actual venue at several places around the Christmas Fair to avoid in-workshop pressure sales.

1-Messiah Chorus Singing (composed by Handel)

2-Wreath Making for Doorways

3-Carol Singing – provide lyrics in both English and German

4-Oral Storytelling

Parzival, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

5-Christmas Carol Play by Dickens

Keep ticket prices low to moderate

6-Christmas Carol Movie

7-Holiday Cloth Napkin Folding

Learn 5 folds

8-Papel Picado – Mexican paper cutting to make Christmas decorations

9-Practice handwriting to write Christmas cards and thank-you letters

10-Make tree ornaments

11-International Dining Etiquette classes – European cutlery handling

12- International Dining Etiquette classes – Indian and Arab – thumb plus first two fingers

13-Poinsettia as science and arts

-Christmas story picture book

-seed identification and various stages of growth

-poinsettia care and typical lifespan

14-Waltzing Classes to the music of Johann Strauss – Contact Arthur Murray.  They could probably bring in certified instructors.

15-Internation Dining Etiquette classes – Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese

16-Puppets – Young children do like floppy muppets who do traditional tales

17-Clown Routines – they also sell insurance for variety acts

18-Flannel Board Storytelling

19-Magic Shows

20-Hoola-hoop classes

21-Frisbee Classes and explanation of Disc Golf

22-Jump Rope and Chants

23-String Arts games like Jacob’s Ladder and Cat’s Cradle

24-Hand Games such as Pat-a-Cake

25-Mother Goose Story Times

26-Beginning Crochet

27-Beginning Knitting

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie