Behold, the Power of Sausage

I went to my mom's for Christmas, and because we are Polish, there is never a question that we will have kielbasa for dinner at some point during the stretch of luxuriant meals. We spend several weeks discussing what to eat when, what side dishes to make, where to pick up the best and freshest foodstuffs.

When it comes to kielbasa, there is only one place to go in Baltimore: Ostrowski's. And that is the first place we went after my mom picked me up from the airport. It's in a narrow-streeted section of the city called Fells Point, and when we pulled up, there were no parking spots to be found. My mom double-parked, and I sat in the car while she went in so I could move it if necessary.

At first, I was nervous. This was not my town; some of the people walking by and chatting on their stoops looked like stevedores who wouldn't think twice about roughing up outsiders. Then, one by one, other cars pulled up behind and in front of our car. Every driver did the same thing: double parked, put their flashers on and went into Ostrowski's. I relaxed and started rummaging for reading material and CDs.

Then my mom called from inside the shop to say it would be another 15 minutes or so because they were just loading up the sausage stuffing machine. Apparently the meat delivery had been late because of the storms, and the fresh kielbasa was going to be extra-fresh. By this time, the line of people was out the door and two houses long, and the line of double-parked cars covered most of the block.

My mom waited half an hour for the sausage we ate on Christmas Eve, and I'm here to tell you, it was worth every minute of that wait.

Polish Pride: Mustard Edition

Yesterday, having done battle at Soulard Farmers Market, I stopped by a grocery store because I had forgotten to buy apples, and I was not up for a second round of battle with that unending knot of slow-moving people. There were also a few items I needed that cannot be found at the farmer's market: dryer sheets, Nutella, and mustard.

At the store, I was pleasantly surprised to spot a mustard with a Polish name on it: Kosciusko. I had no idea who this guy was, but I recognized the name as Polish, and that was good enough for me. My train of thought ran this way: "Wow, mustard made by a Polish guy. I'm Polish, and I like Polish things. I bet this Polish mustard is fabulously delicious."



This morning, when I turned the little plastic barrel around, expecting to find that it had been made in Detroit's Polishtown (Hamtramck) or perhaps imported directly from Poland, I learned that it had been made by Plochman's, a company founded by a German emigre and originally based in Chicago. As best I can figure out from their website, they started making it in the mid-1990s.

So now I'm questioning my purchase logic. Was it really Polish pride that made me buy that mustard? The lure of the familiar? The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it becomes: I am not a fresh-from-Poland emigre desperate for the flavors of home. I am the great-granddaughter of an immigrant who has been to Poland exactly once -- and spoke the language so badly that I ordered, with great confidence, a mountain of pierogi.

That Kosciusko guy, by the way? Not a mustard-maker, not involved in any sort of food-related industry. He was an 18th-century military commander in his native Poland and the fledgling United States. Fortified Philadelphia in 1776, built a bunch of forts along the Canadian border, went home to defend Poland from the Russians in 1789. Didn't know a damn thing about mustard.

Those Germans, though, they know from mustard. I bet this German mustard is going to be fabulously delicious on my turkey sandwich.

More fun with Pączki

Yesterday's post hopefully gave you an insight into the affection and passion Poles have for pączki. But since I probably did not adequately convey the contempt with which my people hold ersatz Polish food, I submit the following two items:

From an aunt, who stood in the rain for half an hour last year while waiting for fresh pączki in Hamtramck:
"Lots of fun conversation with strangers, and the custard filled are still the very, very best. Prune come in a close second for me followed by strawberry. You can only get the real thing in Hamtramck. The large grocery stores just make regular jelly rolls and try to fob them off as pączki. They chintz on the fat."

From a cousin, in an e-mail entitled "Stupid poser pączki":
"And of course our work cafeteria has pathetic powdered sugar covered oversized jelly donuts today that they're trying to pass off as pączkis. Lame."

I am now seriously considering road tripping to Hamtramck for next year's Countdown to Pączki Day. Maybe I'll bring back some good kielbasa, too. I'm certainly not going to bother with the mass-produced stuff; I don't even think they use real garlic.

You Say Fat Tuesday, I Say Pączki Day

Pączki Pals hover above the real deal.

This is going to be a longish post because it’s about food, and I am Polish, and Polish people do not mess around when it comes to food. We know that butter makes it better and the flavor’s in the fat. Case in point: Pączki (POONCH-key), heavy balls of delightfully rich, deep-fried egg dough filled with fruit or custard, traditionally made in the weeks leading up to Lent.

Pączki originated as the answer to the question, “Whatever shall we do with all the sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, for alas, we cannot have any of that yummy stuff between Ash Wednesday and Easter.” If you happen to live in Detroit, or any another heavily Polish area, you can probably find them in grocery stores, though I have it on good authority that those are really just larger versions of ordinary jelly donuts and therefore not worth eating. According to one of my cousins, the time-honored practice of frying pączki in lard imparts “a crisp outer texture with a cakey interior until you get to the filling goodness.” (She is an engineer, and as you can see, her precision extends to food.)

I was born in Motown, and my family lived for a time in Hamtramck, the originally German, then heavily Polish, and now amazingly ethnically diverse community north of downtown Detroit. But since my family moved to another state before I was two, and my husband Mowgli (not his real name) did his graduate work at Wayne State University, he has waited for pączki, whereas I, an actual Detroit Pole, am sad to say I have not.

That’s right, I said, “waited for pączki.” The lure of tradition and confection is such that people wait as long as 24 hours, in the middle of winter, in numbers topping out in the thousands in some communities. Hamtramck holds an annual Countdown to Pączki Day, which involves a pączki cook-off, a pączki toss game (oh, the humanity!), polka music, a bus tour of participating bakeries, and wonder of wonders, free pączki. I'm already hatching a plot to drive up for that next year; it’s only nine hours away, and I’d really like to add that T-shirt to my collection.

A few days ago, I put out a call for pączki memories, and my family responded with food-fueled passion. The funniest item is this: One of my cousins ate 12 pąckzi in one day when he was a junior in high school. He chose his time well; young arteries can handle that kind of assault.

An aunt who now lives in northern Michigan and raised 10 kids still makes them from scratch after starting the tradition 5 or 6 years into her marriage. “I found a Pączki recipe in the Detroit News. From then on, we made Pączki every year without fail - we double the recipe (with so many famished young 'uns, it was a must), so we usually made about 100! Hubby kneaded the dough, someone cut it into rounds, someone fried all 100 (tho we took turns as that is an onerous job). When cooled, someone slit a small opening and someone stuffed it with apricot, raspberry, grape jam. Powdered sugar was lavishly sprinkled on each yummy just before serving.

“Hubby and I still make them. I do manage to freeze as many as I can squirrel away, so that we can serve them to whoever comes up that spring. They go fast. Last year, we didn't fill them until just before we enjoyed munching them. Saved us mucho time! (Never too old to learn new tricks!)”

This is from my mother, who is the oldest of nine: “In my very Polish family, Pączki Day was on the many Saturdays my mother went to Hamtramck to the Polish bakery for fresh bread – rye and/or pumpernickel (dependent upon availability) – just out of the oven. When she was early enough (pączki sold quickly in a Polish bakery back in the day), had enough spare cash (needed at least a dozen for her brood) or the spirit moved her, we were the lucky recipients of the best pączki ever – jelly were our favorite (raspberry, as I recall).

"The last time I had any of those carb-filled, lard-fried delights that came even close to arousing my taste buds’ memories from my childhood was at a Polish bakery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. My niece took me there (we liked the ones filled with the prune jam [powidła]), a Polish classic.”

Incidentally, pączkis were traditionally eaten on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent, but the main day of consumption was shifted with the American influence of Fat Tuesday. This does not, however, stop bakeries, churches and grocery stores from supplying them in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras.

I'll end with some pączki trivia: they go by different names in different countries: gogoşi (Romania); pirashki (Iran); ponchiki (Russia); pampushky (Ukraine); Berliners (Germany and Denmark); bola de berlin (Mexico); krapfen (Austria); spurges (Lithuania); malasada (Portugal); sonho (Brazil); fank (Hungary); and bombolini (Italy).

Ah, just one last thing. If you're local to me, you can find decent ones here, though I doubt they fry them in lard. Pity.

International Word Fest

Yes, that is the cutest whisk in the universe.

There is no way to say this without it oozing geekiness, so I won’t even try to clean it up: I love words. I love finding new-to-me ones (ninebark), rediscovering dusty old ones (groovy) and shoving them back into circulation, and wearing out the ones I’ve loved since forever (fabulous). And this being North America and me being a native English speaker, many of the words that have shaped my language life come from abroad.

When I was growing up, my dad used the word “skosh” to mean “a little,” as in, “I’ll have just a skosh more coffee.” I never knew how to spell it, but when I lived in Japan, I learned where it came from: sukoshi, meaning “a little.” So I wandered around Tokyo and Hokkaido using the parent form of the word my dad used. If I had to guess, I would say the GIs brought it back from WWII after the occupation was over; Merriam-Webster seems to agree.

My first serious boyfriend was from Liverpool, and we used to stage word-battles between the versions of the language we both spoke: pavement vs. sidewalk, elevator vs. lift, car park vs. garage. Neither of us ever conceded defeat as we passionately outlined the ways in which our respective word choices were vastly superior, although now see how “lift” gets to the point faster than the overly formal “elevator.”

A fella from Manchester helped me seduce that same lad by teaching me rude Liverpudlian and Mancunian slang. I shan’t repeat any of it here, as this is a family show, but it is funny to remember that words played a significant part in that portion of my life. Rude words, at that. But then, I was 22, and at the time, rude words worked well in selected situations.

Tokyo was also where I learned about cockney rhyming slang: “apples and pears” for stairs, “dog and bone” for telephone, “plates of meat” for feet. I’m still sad that I don’t live in a country where I can use clever, musical phrases like that and have people understand me.

In my kitchen, there’s a metal sign I picked up at a flea market in LA that says, “tout va bien” (everything is fine, or will be fine). It’s a nod to my 13 years of French class as well as one of my overall philosophies. Call it simplistic, but those three words on that little sign have the power to calm me.

One of the sweetest memories of my childhood is learning the Polish for stock household phrases such as “what a pig,” “good soup” and “give me a kiss.” (Respectively, they are, “taka schvenia,” “dobre zuppa” and “dammi bougie.”)

When I traveled to Poland in 2000 with my mom, I served as the translator, because with two weeks of studying with tapes in the car to and from work, I was better prepared. Also, I am good with languages, and not afraid to make a complete fool of myself to strangers. For all these qualities, and for confidently waving aside the waitress’ concern about our order, we were rewarded with approximately 40 huge pierogies at a restaurant in Krakow. Behold the power of words.

Family Mystery Involving a Captain of Industry

Great-grandpa was always conscious of the camera.

My family is Polish, on both sides, as far back as anyone has researched, though I hesitate to describe myself as 100% Polish because of the fluidity of the country’s borders. One family name is awfully close to that of a Russian statesman, and my maternal grandmother’s lovely olive complexion led to speculation of Romany or Albanian blood. Meanwhile, my features are so solidly Central European that a Bosnian checkout lady once spoke to me in her language; we shared a laugh when I explained why she took me for one of her own.

Poland’s wealth of natural resources and strategic location smack complete with a port on the Baltic Sea conspired to make it the long-suffering scrapper of the region. Its neighbors (Germany, Prussia and Austria) continually angled for control of its lands and resources, resulting at one point in the dissolution of the country in 1795. It returned as a satellite state in 1807 thanks to a deal Napoleon made with the Prussians, and returned to the map in 1918, but for over a hundred years, its main functions were to supply food and soldiers for whatever conflict was being fought by whomever was in control.

When my great-grandfather fled his miserable peasant sharecropping life, the power in charge was Russia. At one point in his journey, he hid in a hay wagon with his boat ticket sewn into the lining of his coat while Russian soldiers poked the hay with pitchforks. If they had found him, he would have been conscripted into the Russian army, or killed, or conscripted and then killed.
He was still a teenager when he arrived in the U.S., and once he was hired onto the Ford line, he worked there until he retired. We don’t know whether he worked on Jeeps or Lincolns, assembled engines or added steering wheels, but we do know he was a huge fan of “Old man Ford” and disliked the younger Ford.

According to family lore, Henry Ford regularly walked the assembly line and knew my great-grandpa and his coworkers by name. In 1919, his son Edsel succeeded him as company president, and again according to faded collective family memory, he was interested primarily in efficiency and profits. His anti-union stance was the chief source of great-grandpa’s ire, although Henry Ford is famously quoted as saying, “The UAW would organize Ford over my dead body.” There is also the very well-documented 1937 Battle of the Overpass, wherein UAW organizers were beaten by factory security forces in broad daylight – in the presence of Detroit Free Press photographers.

I’ve been trying to get my head around this inconsistency; the best theory I have so far, bolstered by an aunt, is that Henry Ford treated his workers well as part of a strategy to keep the unions out. We do know that in 1913, he introduced the $5 a day minimum wage, doubling the going rate of the time, stabilizing his workforce, and rankling his competitors.

The aforementioned aunt shared the following story: Grandpa would spout about what they got from the union, money, blah, blah, their house, and grandma would let him go on until he got to the house. Then she’d interject, “Union, bah!” (or some Polish version of ‘bah’) “Union didn’t give us this house. Gott gave us this house!” End of argument.

My father took an oral history of great-grandpa for a college anthropology class, but sadly, I don’t have a copy of it, and since they’ve both gone to the kielbasa buffet in the sky, it’s lost for now. There may well be a copy in a barn in Phoenix, but that’s definitely fodder for a future post.

More Fun With International Names

I can't quite believe I didn't think to add this given the presence of a Polish character in "The Age of Innocence," but Polish names that end in "ski" become "ska" when a woman uses them. Hence, (that bastard) Count Olenski, but (the alluring and soulful) Ellen Olenska. The photo above is of a street sign in Krakow; if the street had been named after a woman, the name at the top would be "Pl Szczepanska."

Meanwhile, my mother, who works in a hospital out East, tells me that among the Hispanic population, infants are given their mothers' last names at birth, but that changes once the mother and child leave the hospital. Then, the father's last name replaces the mother's last name. If records are requested or the child comes to the ER, the records are tricky to find. Most people who work there understand this and ask a lot of questions, but it used to cause a lot of confusion in the Maternal Child Unit and the nurseries.