Have a sweet day!

Is is the last thursday before the Lent which means we celebrate today Fat Thursday!

 [source]

The tradition of Fat Thursday is very old, even older than the donuts themselves! In the Middle Ages, when they were not yet known in Poland, people were eating pork fat, bacon and fat meats and drinking heavily. The tradition of eating donuts started in XVI century. The supersticion sais that who doesn't eat a donut on Fat Thursday will have bad luck.

In average each Pole eats 2,5 donuts and in total the Polish eat 100 million of donuts that day. An average donut has 200 kcal.

Have a sweet day!:)

Easter Traditions in Poland

Day 1 (Great Saturday)

People prepare a baskets full of goodies: colorful eggs, some bread, a piece of sausage, salt, a sugar lamb, maybe some fluffy fake chicken or bunnies to decoration. They take it to church were the food is blessed. It’s gonna be eaten on an Easter breakfast on Sunday.

Easter basket

[photo source]

Day 2 (Easter Sunday)

The families meet to have breakfast together. They share the eggs from the basket, say each other wishes and feast. The traditional Easter dishes include:

Żurek - traditional Easter soup

Mazurek - traditional Easter cake

Baba wielkanocna - another traditional Easter cake

[photos source] 

and all sorts of eggs (with mayo or stuffed), meats, salads...

Day 3 (Wet Monday)

The other name of an Easter Monday is Wet Monday (in Polish “Lany Poniedziałek” or “Śmigus-Dyngus”) because traditionally everyone splashes each other with water! This tradition comes yet from pagan times when people in villages were beating (lightly, nothing brutal :P) girls’ legs with willow twigs and splashing them with water. If some girl was omitted, there was a superstition that she wouldn’t find a husband quickly. Nowadays just splashing with water stayed (thank you, I wouldn’t like being beaten with twigs, even lightly:P) and everyone splashes everyone, even strangers. Some people exaggerate pouring whole buckets of water on people going to church or even elders turning the tradition not to be so nice anymore as it’s supposed to be fun, but that’s a different story. As long as it’s made in a civiliezed way it’s a lot of fun:) Especially children love this day.

Happy Easter!

Wesołych Świąt!

Leave counting calories for today...

... it's time for debauchery! It's Fat Thursday, last Thursday before the fast. In Poland we eat today...

... donuts

... and "faworki" (sorry, I don't know the English word, if it even exists)

Haven't eaten any yet? Quick, the day is almost over, at least one donut is a MUST ;)

[photos googled]

Christmas traditions in Poland

Christmas in Poland in some points probably looks like in other countries, in others it deffers. We decorate Christmas tree, buy gifts… *cough*… Santa brings gifts and we fest on Christmas Eve together with the whole family. But of course, we can’t start eating before the first star shines! And even before we sit by the table, we share an “opłatek” between us, wishing each person all the best in the coming year. “Opłatek” looks like the Host and tastes like it, but it’s not the same thing. We also share it with friends before Christmas and we send it together with Christmas cards. People in the country also share “opłatek” with animals, but only these which are believed to have been in the stable where the baby Jesus was born. It is also believed that these animals can talk this one night in the year. As far as I know we are the only country that has this tradition (let me know if I’m wrong :) )

All right, we shared an “opłatek”, now we can sit and start eating. On the table, under the cloth we put some hay (as baby Jesus was lying on the hay after being born) and we leave one empty place by the table for an unexpected guest. We have 12 traditional dishes (like 12 Apostoles). The “must be’s” are:

• Carp

• Borsht (beetroot soup) with little dumplings filled with mushrooms. The dumplings are called “uszka” which means “little ears”. Probably the name is because of their shape :)

• Pierogi with sauerkraut and mushrooms. Or some other filling but on Christmas Eve this one is the most popular.

• Fish in jelly.

• Kutia, which is a sweet meal made of wheat, poppy seeds, honey and all sorts of nuts and raisins. We don’t prepare it in my home, but this is a typical traditional dish that is prepared specifically for Christmas.

As you noticed, there’s no red meat or birds. Meat, excluding fish, is not eaten on Christmas Eve at all.

That day we also get presents. We don’t wait till Christmas Day. If there are no kids in the family there’s no problem with gifts. But if there are children, someone must pretend Santa for a while or get the attention of kids somewhere else and then put the presents under the tree. When I was a kid my grandpa always went outside and knocked in the window. Me and my cousins were running to see Santa (who disappeared too quickly) and at that time the rest of the adults put the gifts under the tree. I need to mention that “our” Santa comes from Lapland – in Finland, not from the North Pole or Coca-Cola factories.



At 12 o clock at night there is a mass in church, were people also share “opłatek” with strangers. Then we have two (not just one) days of Christmas. Time for rest after all the preparations and to watch Home Alone ;P

Merry Christmas!

Wesołych Świąt!

[photos googled]

Potato pancakes (placki ziemniaczane)

The Tuesday is over according to my clock, but here's my "Show me on a Tusday... a simple recipe" entry. Potato pancakes is my number 2 (after pierogi) favourite meal. Unfortunatelly it's not really healthy and must have thousands of calories, so I don't eat them often. But I get really wild when my dad makes them :D Unfortunatelly, for some misterious reason, although I make them from the same recipe as my dad, they don't come up so good, huh. I must admit he's potato pancakes master :P

Ingredients

• 2 potatoes
• 1 onion
• 1 table spoon of flour (or more if it's needed)
• 1 egg
• some salt, pepper and some oil

How to do it?

Grate potatoes and onion. Mix them with flour, egg, add salt and pepper. Fry (on big heat).

Most people sprinkle the pancakes with sugar but I prefer without.

Enjoy :)

Dili dili, trali vali, no more smoke

First of all I would like to express my happiness of the fact that after visit in a club my clothes didn’t stink with smoke. On 15^th November 2010 Poland introduced a prohibition of smoking in public places and I could enjoy it’s result on Friday night. The smokers feel indignant with it, they say it’s against democracy, it’s discrimination of them, that people who go to the pub or club should expect that people smoke there and if they don’t want to sit in the stinky mist they can not go in there at all. Then isn’t that opinion a discrimination of non-smokers? Weren’t the non-smokers discriminated for all these years? So now the non-smokers feel relief. Finally they don’t have to breath the smoke, finally their hair and clothes won’t stink after a meeting with friends in a restaurant. The smokers can always go out, smoke there and come back in. Noone denies them smoking. They are only denied poisoning those who don’t choose to smoke. Why is it so hard to understand to some people? Anyway, I was waiting for this act to be passed for a long time, since it works well in other countries I had occasion to visit and now that it finally got into effect I just wanna scream… YEEEEEEAAH!

Second, I would like to express my happiness of my grandmas’ 90^th birthday which was on Saturday and today we organize a small party for her. My dad prepared chicken soup, Greek style fish (which is a Polish dish that has nothing to do with Greece, besides the name). My mum prepared a Polish vegetable salad (though I discovered with astonishment that it’s not known in all parts of Poland, yet in many houses it’s traditionally served on every holidays, birthdays, names days etc.). It consists of all types of vegetables, eggs and mayonnaise. I once read an article that it became popular during communistic times, as there wasn’t much food in the shops, so people were growing vegetables and fruit in their gardens (if they had one), the mayonnaise was one of the things possible to buy often and so, this salad became traditional. It’s also my dads’ birthday today and in two days, my dogs’… though we’re not celebrating this event, hehe.

Polish vegetable salad

Greek style fish

In the end, let me introduce a cute song I got to know yesterday on my Russian classes. It’s a song for kids from some Russian cartoon, about a lazy boy who doesn’t want to help his brothers. I guess it is supposed to teach children that if they won’t work hard, they won’t get anything, but the lyrics “Это мы не проходили, Это нам не задавали” (we didn’t learn it, that wasn’t required), just ask to be taken as a motto :P