>I was surprised when one of my wife's cousins in Augsburg served - among other things - fat sandwiches at a cocktail party.
>I'd never seen anything like that in the US.
>I gave it a try, but it's not on my top ten list.

It's something we grew up on. Though, "sandwich" was too fancy a word, "bread and lard" is what we called it. Sprinkled with paprika (the sweet variety) for color and taste. That's what you'd get to survive between breakfast and lunch, because the whole interval was covered with running around, out on the street or in the yard. And you didn't necessarily get it at home - the mother of any one of us, to whose house we'd happen to visit during all this running, would make them for all (three or four) of us.

My wife still does that for herself, when she feels like having a breakfast. Pork or, preferably, goose.

Ah, BTW, in all those years in the US we bought a goose once. When we opened the thickly printed shrink wrap, it was all moldy. Seems to be one of those items that nobody buys and the retail gives it a token attempt to sell once in a while, then tries the next year again. And we almost forgot about them even when we returned - and now we're through our fourth goose in the last six months :).