Cultural letter #5 Food and cooking
Dear friends,
Concerning food/cooking:
My kids begged for me to cook,
really cook, while I was in the states on furlough. I don't think I used but about 10 lbs. of
flour the whole year we were there. Of course there were lots of meals in your
houses and on the road. However, I tried
many different packaged mixes and purchased English muffins and breads,
etc. My parents regularly go to a couple
of different flea markets and could get English muffins 2pkgs/$1, bread, 3
loaves/$1, mixes and all sorts of prepackaged stuff for much cheaper than the
supermarket. So, I could place my order
with my mom and not have to cook much at all. With "web bucks" deals
at the grocery store, sometimes they paid me for buying things.... It is hard
to get motivated to make your own salsa if you can buy it for 50cents a jar.
However, if you have to pay almost $4/jar (small one) like we do over here, I
am very motivated. It is sorta like sewing.
With beautiful dresses at Goodwill for $1.99, or even $4.99, or given to
us by you all, it is hard to get motivated to spend $20 on material/patterns
and buttons and sew, even if the end product is beautiful. I was repairing some jeans the boys had put
holes in the knees and commenting to them as I ripped out the side seams while
we were riding to the store, that if we were in the states I probably wouldn't
even repair these, but would rather go to a yard sale and buy another pair for
50cents. However, the prospect of
buying new here just isn't worth it to me--I'll fix the jeans. However, when
the patches need patches, then I figure the jeans have about had it, and it's
better to just retire them.
Do the Polish ladies
"cook?" I'd say yes. They are masters at soups, as I mentioned
before in another letter. They aren't big on casseroles as we know them, except
something like bigos, which is a sauerkraut/kielbasa
blend. It seems that everyone likes best the one that their mom makes. Pierogi, which the
easiest way I could describe them to you, would be like a ravioli, a dough
filled with white cheese--a sort of drained cottage cheese-, meat, or cabbage
are too much work for me to want to make.
I can buy them fresh or frozen if I want to eat them. They bread and fry
a lot of foods, fix a lot of pasta and eat lots of potatoes, cabbage and
beets. They do sell packaged soups that
I like very much--instant soups. The
"purist" Polish cook won't touch these, but the younger generation
appreciates them.
When we've gone to people's
homes, I know that we are treated royally, and so I'm not at all sure that what
we are having is "normal."
However, usually when we have been there, it has been soup first, then
the main dish which often was a piece of meat, cabbage, potatoes or beets (1 or
2 or all 3), possibly a salad with about 3-6 different vegies
in it all cut into infinitesimal pieces and gravy for the potatoes. Rarely was there bread. Then, dessert, if offered, was a cake that
wasn't as sweet as we would be used to for cake, or some sort of cheesecake or
a special very pretty cake made with layers of gelatin and fruit and some
cake. I've had a carrot cake "down
south" that couldn't be topped.
Unfortunately it was when I wasn't talking yet in Polish and I didn't
ask for the recipe.
Once when I
was commenting to some friends that we were going to have watermelon for "kolacja" which is like a small meal in the evenings, a
Polish lady laughed at me. She
said, (roughly translated), "Oh my, my husband wouldn't stand for that,
for to a Polish man, watermelon isn't kolacja
(supper), but you have to have something hearty like kielbasa!" Since the big meal is in the middle of the
day sometimes people don't even eat kolacja, and the
only reason we were having anything at all was because watermelon was a good deal. However, I usually only buy kielbasa about 4x
a year, because I know how bad it is for you, and even at that, Mike is the one
who usually picks up some--not me. He does try to find the kind from turkey,
though. [I wrote back in May that I had
been terribly sick--I'm strongly suspicious that it was food poisoning from
kielbasa I had for dinner that day--all the classic, acute symptoms that lasted
from Thurs. afternoon through Sat. evening when the pain finally let up. Each of us had had our own small
kielbasa. It is the only thing I could
think of that could have attributed to my severe symptoms and me alone--there
was no flu going around or sickness of any kind. None of the kids had anything (for which I'm
thankful) and Mike stayed well. With those
memories, I won't be in a hurry to eat it again.]
Back to camp:
A friend of mine who had been
here in
Fruits/vegies
available right now and prices:
Did you want to know this kind
of thing? This way you can compare our prices to yours. These are fresh and
this is the season for these things so they are at the best prices ever right
now: I'll try to take the prices as
given to me and translate them into price per lb. in dollars. (Of course it is sold by the kilogram and in
zlotys, not dollars.) Prices fluctuate,
so anyone reading this could differ with me and probably be accurate. I try to hunt down the best price for a
decent quality. I won't buy the really
old/tiny/bad stuff at a 20% discount.
wild blackberries:
wild blueberries (like in
American "tame"
blueberries:
raspberries:
sour cherries:
fresh sweet cherries (like Bing):
apples (not really the season yet):
tomatoes:
(old)
Potatoes:
(new)
Potatoes:
yellow wax beans:
onions:
watermelon:
apricots:
peaches/nectarines:
zucchini :):
sweet corn (partially husked, wrapped individually and sold
in about every sixth place in the farmer's market):
bananas: