would you go out of your way just for sugar?

I've received many strange looks from people when I tell them that I drove about an hour out of my way on a trip to Minneapolis this past winter to buy 10 kilos (that's 22 pounds) of sugar for my tea... Yes, that's right, on what should have been a straight shot for 7 1/2 hours up I-35, I added about 2 hours to my total trip to make a detour to Holland, Iowa, for sugar.

What is so special about this sugar, you ask? Well, it is pretty much what we call "rock candy", but it is not on a string, medium to large sized sugar crystals. Depending on the size, one of these will last for one or two cups of tea. Sometimes, when I have been close to running out of these "Klüntje", I've used sugar cubes instead, but I think that it just isn't the same thing... What can I say, I guess I am a tea snob!

Once upon a time, my grandparents would put one or two boxes of this sugar in any packages they were sending, or I would stash as much of it in a suitcase as I could fit in there and not end up overweight for a return flight. But, when you only have a box or two, it seems to disappear more quickly. When I was first working on my genealogy a few years back, I discovered that there was an "Ostfriesen Tea & Porzellan Shop" in Holland, where I was going to look at some genealogy records. When I visited the shop, it was fun to see all the things that I usually only see in Germany, and I decided to just buy an entire case of sugar. It was a sort of experiment, to see how long it would last, and also nice to have enough sitting around that I wouldn't need to be transporting it from overseas! I was pleasantly surprised to discover that 10 boxes ended up lasting almost 3 years.

Here is a site where you can read some information about this area of Germany that I call home,
Ostfriesland (and yes, it is in English).