Thank Goodness for the Fall of Communism, ???

 In 2013, I read an article in the Economist. It said that a nation's cuisine can  provides a chronology of its sociocultural history. They declared as an example, Poland, for instance as being a good example. The 40 years of communism Poland endured by Poles changed their food consumption. Communism tried to do to the national cuisine what it did to so much else and reduced it to the lowest common denominator: uniform and bland stodge characterized by poor ingredients, low standards and low expectations. So, in this respect, thank goodness for the fall of communism.
In the 12 years I spent living there, I can tell you that in the heart of Poles, their favorite homemade dishes were not forgotten. It was proved when in the early years of post communism, western fast food and processed foods could not enter the market simply because Polish women would not buy it. They wanted to cook again, to taste again. In the years that followed communism one enthusiastic chef at one of Warsaw's five-star hotels talked about  how he wanted to bring "proper" Polish food, not just to foreign guests but also to Poles. He said, "to find real Polish food you have to look at pre-war cookbooks," he said. In those books, he explained, you realize that Polish food was deeply regional, and what passed for a meat cutlet, for example, in one region was completely different elsewhere".
Thankfully and maybe to some surprisingly that even though Poland experienced the Western fast food invasion and big box stores, a generation of younger Poles has been breathing new life into Polish food, dusting down old and long-forgotten recipes, and happily blowing away the almost nationalistic conservatism that surrounded food by introducing new ingredients and cooking styles.
There is a food revolution now gripping Poland. One finds cooks, both professional and amateur, who have traveled, seen what the world has to offer on a plate and discovered what is both right and wrong with Polish food. Because of that, and mostly because of the long gone communism, Poland now has an army of farmers and small food producers bringing original and, very often, organic produce to the table.
Not so long ago cheese in Poland was either żółty or biały (literally yellow or white) and that was pretty much it. Now a trip to one of the growing number of farmers' markets in the country will confront a shopper with a huge choice of locally produced cheese. At the same time the average Pole is becoming more discerning in their taste, able to buy better quality produce and also eager to break away from the refectory-standard food that dominated Polish cuisine for decades. This has resulted in a plethora of new Polish cookbooks being published. Even Anne Applebaum, an acclaimed historian and the wife of Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, has written her own volume of Polish recipes.
Ironically, the good aspect of communism is that a lot of Polish farmland today can be categorized as organic having no chance during communism to be polluted by harsh fertilizer or soil erosion by years of cultivating with heavy machinery.


 *a blend of my experiences in Poland along with views taken from the observations of the Economist author

Grazing in Poland Applies to Animals

Grazing in the US means snacking all day long. While in Poland applies to animals only. Eating is still seen as a celebration there, a time for family to come together and share a meal. I learned how to cook and eat in eastern Europe. Though variety of food was limited even in the late 90's and early 2000s, Polish families dined on soups, potatoes and pork, and plenty of sausages (dried and smoked). My favorite Polish mom - Ania Bieniecka was and still is a great homemaker and cook. She could come home after a full day of work and whip up a three course dinner in nothing flat. Soup was the starter and then the main meal of meat and potatoes and a vegetable side and lastly a simple fruit dessert. Everyone in the family looked forward to her meals, it reflected her love and her forgiveness. Why forgiveness? Because, 'the family' is the 'greedy institution' as social scientist Lewis Coser's put it. Its members demand much of the mother. Yet, from my many years of observations, the Polish mother is wise social member dutifully brings her children 'her flock' back to the table = the family.
Unfortunately, this is not the 'culture' or social practice in America... or at least not any longer. Grazing in the US means snacking all day long and is even touted as a way to live nutritionally. I don't doubt that one can find nutirional snacks and one could make the argument that a person could live off such snacks. However, as a sociologist, what about the social aspect of eating. Society needs families. In fact, families that compose society are the backbone of any society. One can make the argument that a family is a group of people and any group of people could come together to snack and hence family grazing. Perhaps, but grazing suggests individual eating and grazing also suggests flexibility concerning individual eating times/places.  I would not call grazing with 'strangers' at the snack court = family time. 
In my opinion, this is just another strategy of the far left progressive agenda. Most Americans are being fed the 'grazer' mentality as if it is better for people 'you'. The grazer eats little tid-bits throughout the day.  Effectually, what the grazer lifestyle does is break down the family and create individuals grazing herds on the plain of big government. It causes people to detach from old traditions, detach from each other culturally and from any shared socio-historical politics. It allows Big Gov to feed people on less while making them more dependent.

Animals graze in Poland, and its people eat well with their family.

Visiting Cemeteries and Lights to be Lit

Today and tomorrow Poles will go to the cemeteries to light candles and pay their respects to those that have passed on. I always enjoyed this time of year when I lived in Poland. At first, being an American, it seemed sober, somber and sad. The sober part in the meaning of being fully aware that death is inevitable for everyone in this world. Americans flee from death, we hide from death, we dodge death at every close encounter. We don't like suffering and we don't like to be around suffering and certainly we are uncomfortable to be around those grieving for the dead.
In Poland, people grieve too. But at this time of year, they bravely celebrate this sober reality and in a way 'salute' those that have already suffered and gone on. The streets are full of corner florists and candles can be bought by the case. No matter what the weather, they go and they put flowers, candles, trinkets. They meet old friends and are introduced to new ones. The cemeteries glow with the promise of eternal light, some say that you can see the cemeteries from heaven above (satellite pictures). And, to add to the atmosphere of this celebration, on most cemetery grounds, a violinist softly plays in the background. I loved the grand tour in Warsaw ending at the most famous of cemeteries where celebrities and heroes remain. Crowds squeeze close together in front of the flames and hum to or hush to their children.
Children today in Poland have caught on to the way Americans celebrate Halloween, and they may be putting on a costume and going to a party this evening; but what sadly has not caught on here is the pilgrimage to the cemetery to 'salute' those that are already in heaven.

Life on the Eastern Border

Life on the eastern border was so simple, so pure. I ate like a king. Food was so organic, the USD would not know how to label it. The only products bought were flour, sugar, tea, coffee and candy. I remember eating pierogi as big as the palm of my hand, filled with fresh curd cheese. I dipped them into a large jar of homemade sour cream. I spread fresh baked bread with hand churned butter and drank milk from the cow, never getting sick or a rash or anything. The great aunt and uncle were simple gracious people, always hospitable - sincerely welcoming. When I stayed the night in their two room house, I slept like a baby enveloped by darkness that laid on me like a heavy quilt. The sleeping room was the living room, the main salon, the family room. It was in that room that both were waked and celebrated after their burial. Everything good happened there, birth, life and death. How I wish I could live like that!

Mushroom Hunting in Poland... the fungus amongus

At this time of year, I miss Poland very much. Why? Because, it is time to hunt for and pick mushrooms. It is time to walk through the colorful forest of Kabaty and hunt for those strange and beautiful mushrooms. Most edible and some not. The most incredible mushroom I found and ate was the Ox Tongue. It is called Oak Tongue in Polish. It grows out from the base of an oak tree. It is liver like, covered with dripping gooey slime like strawberry jelly. You slice it and fry it and it tastes like a filet of beef with lemon juice.
The other mushrooms that are prized are of the the Boletus Edulis and the Lepiota Procera. Both are excellent! Especially, the later 'Parasol Mushroom' fried in butter and made into a sandwich, laid between toasted bread is best. In central and eastern European countries this mushroom is usually prepared similarly to a cutlet. It is usually run through egg and breadcrumbs and then fried on a pan with some oil or butter. Then you served with bread as it makes a delicious meal during summer and fall. 
 A savory Slovak recipe is to bake caps stuffed with ground pork, oregano, and garlic. Italians and Austrians also serve the young, still spherical caps stuffed with seasoned minced beef, baked in the same manner as stuffed peppers.
This past weekend, though not in my beloved Poland, I walked the woods here with my beloved and we spotted mushrooms. There is something comforting walking through the woods, looking under deadwood and leaves... scouting for these delicious prizes. The air is filled with the smells of fungus, the sun is shining through the brightly colored leaves, the wind blows a coolness that says winter is coming.

Poland, Committed Ally of America is Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Poland is a small east European country that is geographically between a rock and a hard place. In the meaning that it has borders with Germany and Russia. Yes, Poland is in the European Union, but old ideas of borders and identity run deep.
Where U.S. Translates as Freedom
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: December 28, 2003

WARSAW

I found the cure.

I found the cure to anti-Americanism: Come to Poland.

After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the
Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just
three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get
this: people here actually tell you they like America — without whispering.
What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde
Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No,
they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism.
Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael
Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after
visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world —
including the United States."

What's this all about? It starts with history and geography. There's nothing
like living between Germany and Russia — which at different times have
trampled Poland off the map — to make Poles the biggest advocates of a
permanent U.S. military presence in Europe. Said Ewa Swiderska, 25, a Warsaw
University student: "We are the small kid in school who is really happy to
have the big guy be his friend — it's a nice feeling."

Indeed, all the history and geography that Western European youth have
forgotten, having grown up in a postmodern European Union, are still central
to Polish consciousness — well after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "We
still remember many things," said Jan Miroslaw, 22, also a Warsaw University
student. "We are more eager to cooperate with America rather than just say
`no.' [The West Europeans] just don't remember many things — like the wars.
They live too-comfortable lives."

No wonder then when young Poles think of America, they think of the
word "freedom." They think of generations of U.S. presidents railing against
their communist oppressors. There is a huge message in this bottle. In the
Arab world, because of a long history of U.S. support for Arab autocrats, who
kept their people down but their oil flowing to us, America was a synonym for
hypocrisy. In Poland, where we have consistently trumpeted freedom, America
means freedom. We need to remember that. We are what we stand for.

Poland's becoming a member of the E.U. will give the U.S. an important friend
within that body — a counterweight to those E.U. forces that would like to
use anti-Americanism as the glue to bind the expanding alliance and that
would like to see the E.U. forge its identity as the great Uncola to
America's Coca-Cola.

But as powerful as Poland's bond to America is these days, we dare not take
it for granted. Poland has some 2,400 troops in Iraq. That's the good news.
The bad news is that roughly 75 percent of Poles oppose their deployment.
Polish officials will tell you Poland sent troops to Iraq to help keep the
Americans in Europe. But the public doesn't make such connections, and most
people don't understand what their boys are doing there or what Poland is
getting out of it. (How about a few extra visas for Poles?) If the U.S. ends
up in a mess in Iraq, so will Poland. Many "old" Europeans will then laugh at
Warsaw, and that would be highly corrosive for Polish-U.S. relations.

At the same time, once Poland is fully ensconced in the E.U., its young
people will grow up in that postmodern E.U. nirvana, where anti-Americanism
is in the drinking water. Sadly, many education and public diplomacy programs
the U.S. directed at Eastern Europe after the fall of communism have been cut
or redirected to the Muslim world. Bad timing.

There is now a competition between the United States of America and the
United States of Europe for the next generation of Poles — who don't all have
their parents' emotional ties to the U.S. — "and the U.S. is losing this
competition," says a Polish foreign policy expert, Grzegorz Kostrzewa-
Zorbas. "The new generation in Poland likes American pop culture, but it has
less contact with American high culture — like education. It is so much
easier for young Poles to go to university in Germany or France."

Given Poland's geography and history, there's a limit to how far it will
drift from America. Poland will never be France. But we shouldn't assume it
will remain the Poland of 1989 forever, either, and if it doesn't, that could
have real consequences for America's standing in Europe.


That article by Thomas Friedman still holds true. I observed much change since 2003 which has significantly put Poland ahead since then but the depth of Polish identity remains though if visiting Warsaw it looks more and more like any other cosmopolitan European city.  Since the crisis in the Ukraine, Poles remain between a rock and a hard place and if you read the article found on the link just below, you will understand that illustration and or metaphor. BTW, Poles still need a visa to the US. ;-(

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/poland-close-committed-ally-america-10784

The Polish Family

The Polish Family

The family in Poland is a micro version of the nation, a homogenous social entity. What is that like? It is the social situation in which family members are of the same ethnic background, same race, same religion. There is in that a great sense of solidarity, security and continuity. This is not to say that Polish families do not suffer from conflict between each other, or hardship or neglect. However, those sufferings are more easily overcome or at best understood as part of the experience of being Polish, being human, being a residue of social interaction between members that have free will, experience emotion in a place. The results even if unbalanced, or unfair for one is reconciled in the hindsight of being Polish. This time, I don't get my way but next time I might and in this respect Polishness will remain, it will continue ... in this I rest in my identity of who I am and am not. I am Polish, as is my father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, cousin, neighbor... I am part of something much bigger, something with definite boundaries, something absolute.
In this I am eternal.
Acts 17:24-28 " The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything; because, He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and have our being."