Vegeta on the brain

My first German teacher, in Canada, once suggested we go together to a quite traditional German restaurant to hear a bit of German. She said it would be a good experience, but the food was "terrible, everything very Maggi". This was before I lived in Germany, but even then I sort of knew what she meant: Maggi is a kind of savory flavoring that is ubiquitous in the cheaper sort of German, Austrian or Swiss restaurants. Its a savory thing, but as for many of these kinds of things, a major component of it is mono sodium glutamate (MSG). In the former Yugoslavia, the MSG variant of choice is Vegeta.

Very early on, I noticed that the food in Serbia was too savory for my taste, and moreover, that despite a lot of time spent on things like soup, the taste was very often the same. It was only some time later that I noticed that despite hours of preparation, and a complex set of ingredients acquired after some difficulty from far-flung parts of the city, that the cooking would invariably end with a large dose of Vegeta. Baka would get up in the middle of the night to make clear soup, and one would end up with something that tasted a bit like something from a packet.

Any biochemist (like myself) will warn you that Glutamate, the active ingredient, is a neurotransmitter. Indeed, "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" - whereby certain people suffer from odd neurological symptoms such as numbness after eating - is attributed to MSG. I wonder if this explains the strange feelings in my brain that come after eating in Serbia or Croatia - or is that simply the in-laws?

Anyway, tip for improving your punjene paprike or sarma or whatever: skip the Vegeta, use fresh herbs and it'll blow people away.

P.S. I'm going to try and get back to this blog - Serbia's been blowing real hot and cold for me lately, but it's getting better.