Traditional Polish cuisine has lots of pickled items in the menu. It makes sense: the winters are long and cold, and there’s no way to get fresh food (other than meat or dairy) in the dead of winter. If you want cabbage in February, you’d better turn it into sauerkraut in the autumn; if you want cukes in January, convert them to pickles in the fall. To love Polish food, then, means to love sour things.

To be really Polish — to be Polish at the bone — you have to love your sauerkraut. The Boy, for instance, ate three helpings of it today at dinner.