What a pleasant feeling to have so much food in the house after a day of cooking. I smoked ribs, tenderloin, sausages, and chicken, then cooked a pot of chili and a smaller pot of dal makhani. In addition to other work around the house. And now I have little desire to do anything other than go to sleep.
food and cooking
Prawdziwy Polak
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.
Licking the Bowl
Eating Rosół
Graham Crackers
The Boy has a peculiar way of eating crackers, apple wedges, chicken fingers, triangles of watermelon etc. He likes to stake his claim on each piece before really digging in.
Soup
L is a picky eater -- no doubt about it. Certainly she has some odd tastes, odd by the average American girl standards, I think. Still she can throw us a curve ball, protesting something that seems so logical for her to life. Soup is always a hit with her, but K's tomato soup from yesterday wasn't a hit. Not sure why: it used to be a big hit. But it wasn't. And it wasn't any better tonight when we finished up the leftovers. She basically ate next to nothing, leaving almost a whole bowl of soup. Granted, she got nothing else for the evening with the understanding that she would have to finish the soup before she could have anything else. Nothing.
Tonight, during prayers, we reached "Give us this day our daily bread," and I pointed out to L that she would get that soup back at breakfast. "We're not going to waste food, especially when it's something that you used to like and eat willingly. She fussed, predictably, but then, thinking about reading the news and the horrors occurring in Syria and Iraq as ISIS sweeps through and imposes strict Islamic law, committing their own brand of ethnic cleansing, I decided to give the Girl a little perspective.
"L, there are children in a country called Iraq now who are literally dying because they don't get food or water."
"Why?"
Brief overview appropriate for a seven-year-old, includes terms like "bad people" and oversimplification.
"So these children are so hungry, L, that you could spill that soup on the floor, and they would willingly lap it up like they were animals."
Silence. Wide eyes.
"You're lucky: you fuss about being given something you don't want to eat. These children, if they had the energy to fuss, would fuss about not having anything to eat. At all."
We'll see tomorrow what happens. I'm hopeful, but I know how stubborn L is. Besides, that "kids starving in [insert country]" argument seems rarely to work.
Pickles Redux
We tried our preserved cucumbers (i.e., in a vinegar solution as opposed to brine).
I think we’ve got the recipe of champions.
So we did another batch tonight…
Cukes
And by the way, the pickles turned out perfectly.
Pickles and Picnics
The Boy has some strange tastes, some strange favorites: pickle juice is a favorite drink. Finish off a bottle of pickles -- the American, vinegary type -- and he'll jump on that bottle immediately.
The Girl has always had some strange tastes, too. It's only been in the last year that she's even ventured to try that favorite of American kids from coast to coast, the humble (and not-so-good-for-you) hot dog.
What to make to make of this? Nothing more than the obvious: kids too are individuals, and their tastes grow and change with time. For now, we're happy the Girl loves so many Polish soups and the Boy just loves everything. Likely to change, but for now, it's good.
Na Oko
“Ile czosneku dajesz?”
“Na oko, na oko.”
When you’re getting recipes from Babcia, they tend to take that turn. “How much garlic do you add?” you might ask. “Just eyeball it,” comes the reply.
How can I possibly eyeball it when I’ve never done it in my life? Dziadek taught me in a similar way how to prepare the brine for meat when preparing pork for smoking. It was actually experience that taught me that, in reality, the proportions don’t matter so very much as you might expect.
Given the fact that the instructions Babcia provided for making pickles roughly approximated the instructions Dziadek gave for making the brine, I just eyeballed it.
Dill, whole allspice, some garlic, bay leaves — the Polish basics. I decided to add some fresh oregano and basil, knowing it probably wouldn’t have any effect given the amount of other spices I was putting in the brine.
I’ve always loved pickles, but it was in Poland that I learned what a true pickle could be, not preserved in some vinegar solution but made in a brine that leaves behind the look and taste of raw cucumber but transforms it just enough that it’s not, well, raw cucumber.
Given the number of cukes we’re pulling off our vines every day this year, we knew fairly early in the growing season that this would be the year we finally learned how to make our own pickles. Such a simple process: some herbs, some salt water, some cucumbers, a ceramic pot, and a bit of gauze to cover it all.
“You should be able to eat the smaller ones after four days or so,” Babcia explained. It might be difficult to wait that long.