SMACZNEGO

This is a post I have been intending to write for the longest time, so this is going to be a lengthy one. Prepare yourself. One of the distinctive experiences of world travel is getting to try all kinds of foods that are new to you but traditional in the way that they represent a place. Yes, I've had pierogis, bigos, obwarszanki, pickled herring in cream and a LOT of kielbasa, but some of my most memorable food moments are not always Polish in origin. Here are some highlights:

"Not What the Pilgrims Had In Mind"

I'll start with Thanksgiving since that was a big event, and in fact it was the first major American holiday that I have spent outside my country. Some of my American friends and I talked about trying to recreate a traditional Thanksgiving meal here at Piast, but that never came to fruition with our midterm exams taking up most of our free time and brain cells. Besides, I haven't really noticed that Poles eat turkey at all. Besides, what kind of student-made feast could top 2006's Powerhouse Turkey Day? I did my own part of celebrating by listening to Sarah Vowell read a story on a "This American Life" episode about Thanksgiving with her family, and thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to talk with my own family, Peter finally included.

Coincidentally, with our exams finished as of last Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), Isabelle had planned on making a giant pot of miso soup with our Japanese classmates. It was meant to be a celebratory dinner, and it was marvelous. Miso, tofu, shiitake mushrooms, potatoes, onions, some kind of Japanese boullion, and seaweed. Not only did we have miso soup carefully supervised by four Japanese students, Isa also created a rice and tomato dish with all of her Italian-French culinary experience. Wait - there's more! For desert, we had waffles topped with jam. Those were a little more off-the-cuff since none of us had ever made the batter from scratch before, and we had to keep approximating the conversion from the American recipe I got from the internet into the metric equivalent. Nonetheless, I think I will always remember how at one point all of us were standing in a circle in the 6th floor kitchen, passing a bowl every minute or so from one person to the next to beat the egg whites for the waffle batter.

The evening's experience made me consider what this holiday is supposed to represent. Yes, there were all of those messy consequences to deal with once the white men had landed in America, such as, ahem, smallpox, but Thanksgiving was centered around togetherness and food. TO get to Poland, I had to travel across the ocean and disembark in a country where I knew neither the land or the people. Looking around the bed that served as our dinner table at all the people who helped prepare our meal, I took a moment to give silent thanks for the opportunity to be here and to spend that American "święta" (holiday) with some of the people closest to me.

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"Thank you Bloedow's"

It was a foggy, rainy, and chilly day in Krakow. It wasn't at all the beautiful weather that I had gotten used when I first arrived in the city. I had also been put in a bad mood after a full day of classes, and then instead of going home where I really wanted to be, I offered to accompany Isabelle on one of her crazy runs to Carrefour. It was still going to be a long afternoon...

To get from one end of the Stare Miasto to the other, Isa and I walked through the Planty (parks) that ring the old town. But then to get to the shopping center and Carrefour, you have to go through a small underpass beneath a bust street. The shopping center is right next to Krakow's train station, so this underpass sees a lot of pedestrian traffic in a day. Of course, there are small shops and stall that line each side to take advantage of all this high visibility.

It was in this underpass, in the right side, just before the exit into the shopping center plaza, that I had my first and my best pączek. I had been dying to try a pączek since it was one of the few Polish things and words (only known to me by its plural "pączki") that I knew before coming. It is a fried round of dough, filled with a special rosehip jam, and covered in a delicate glaze. Basically it's a doughnut. I bought one of these little balls of fried goodness for 1.10 zloty, and from the first bite it was as if I had only a mouth full of sunshine. The glaze was a perfect layer of sweet and just a tad crispy, the interior was fluffy and golden, and that rosehip jam is still a foreign delicacy to me. What struck me the most about this doughnut was that the taste took me back to a place thousands of miles away. It took me to a place where I knew the rest of the day was going to be okay. The taste and the texture and the feeling all took me back to my favorite corner bakery in Winona, MN, a staple of my childhood, Bloedow's.

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"Lecsó"

Tamás Fözö, my Hungarian, is a cook. Literally. His name, "Fözö" means "cook" in Hungarian. However, irony of ironies, he does anything but. I mean, he basically eats for survival and goes through pounds of instant cappuccino mix. That's my Tomi. But one day, as a super special treat (and in honor of Annie's visit) Tom Cook made the traditional Hungarian dish "lecsó". It was a circus in the kitchen for a while, but the finished product was great. Here is the recipe in Tom's own words as I made him write them down:

Lescó for 4 Persons

1. onion cut, 1-2

2. 1 kg paprika (peppers, in English)

3. 1 kg pomidory (tomatoes)

4. 2-5 eggs

5. 1 very small spoon of salt & sugar

6. some meat, maybe kielbasa

Everything has to be sliced!

Paprika has to collapse! WAIT!

We don't need water because the paprika has her own.

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Finally, I include this bit just be cause it's a little fun. Cookies. I have made three different cookie recipes since I have been here: Peanut Butter Cookies with Annie and Tomi, Thumbprint Cookies with Sabine and Amelie, and last night's Banana Bread-esque Vegan Cookies. I was just in one of those moods to bake. However, I had to get a little creative with my ingredients since I had no eggs and just a little butter. Not to mention that we don't have any measuring cups or spoons. But come on, I am probably one of the few students in this whole dorm that has both baking soda AND baking powder. Here are are the final results. Flour on the bottom, sugar on the top, and egg-less banana goodness in between. I am quite proud of myself.