Food Food Food Food

We had a lovely polish dinner on Sunday, but I feel like I cheated.  Looking through the cookbooks, I remembered many of the recipes by the things my grandparents used to eat.  Herring is big in Poland--I actually ate herring sandwiches when I was little-- beets served in all kinds of ways are popular too. I realize that lots of people love beets, but shudder--I'd rather eat the herring. Probably the most repulsive traditional food--at least to Western pallets was my grandparents beloved golat.  Take pigs feet or some other unacceptable joint and boil them--save the water and chop up the meat, add some spices and return the meat and spices to the water (or a portion of it. Refrigerate until solidified, then dig in.

We chickened out and had a good dinner instead.  First up was a kielbalsa sausage--fried up and eaten with mustard. Then a "Toadstool" which is a hard boiled egg. Slice a bit off the top and bottom so it will stand up--top it with half a tomato so it looks like a toadstool and dot with mayo.  Quite fun.  Next was "nothing soup." Beat egg whites with sugar to make merengues--the soup itself is milk with vanilla and sugar, cook the merengues on top of the soup (that boiled over), the result----vanilla pudding soup.  Moving on---salad with sliced rutabaga (not bad), the the main dish of Pierogi--(stuffed dumpling things that are boiled then fried in butter)--I made two kinds--meat/onion and cheese/potato. Quite good especially when dipped in sour cream. Dessert was a poppy-seed cake.  Word to the casual cook---watch out on these foreign desserts--the cakes tend to turn out simply HUGE. I'm not sure if the general idea is to cook enough for the whole village, but that's about the scale of things.