Question of the day.

Thought we’d do some “lasts” questions again for a while, I’ve been recently focused on a lot of things, but not questions topics, and that’s pretty easy and uncomplicated, and there was a thread with them on BTN recently, so: What was the last thing you ate?
My answer:
A bread roll with a creamy cheese and some chilli flavoured kabanosy. DO you know what kabanosy are? As far as I know it’s only a Polish thing, though I may be wrong. A kabanos is a thin, usually dry sausage with a smoky flavour. I am not big on meat in general, but kabanosy are one of the types of meat I do like. They can really vary but the ones we eat most often are small, they are a perfect thing to take with yourself if you go on a trip, or picnic, or any sort of long travel, that’s what we usually take when going somewhere further, along with sandwiches, and I’ve heard many little kids really like them in particular, well maybe not chilli ones, but other small-sized. And as I said the ones we usually buy are chilli flavoured. In my opinion, the dryer, the better, well as far as you can actually eat it obviously. I’ve also had some cherry tomatoes from my Dad’s garden, they were scrummy. 🙂 How about you? 🙂

Question of the day (9th April).

It’s actually after midnight, so my question for yesterday that I have for you is:
If I were to come and stay with you for a week, what would I expect to find in my diet for those seven days? My answer:
I’m gonna tell you what you, my reader, could expect in your diet if you were to stay with me at my home for a week.
First of all, I’d ask you what you like to eat, that’s quite obvious for me, if you have guests for a longer time, you want them to feel possibly familiar and comfortable, don’t you? I might have some vague idea as for what you like about some of you guys, but about some others I might know nothing at all as for your food preferences. I can count on my one hand’s fingers the times I’ve had any guests for a night or longer, I had some boarding school friends that I invited, but it was very occasionally, I didn’t really had friends that I’d feel close and comfortable enough with to invite them to my house, but I did invite some and then my Mum always asked me what they liked to eat and so we tried to adjust to it as much as possible. It could be slightly harder to make up some diet if you’d have some dietary limitations, but it’s surely manageable with a bit of creativity. We don’t eat like very very healthily, but my Mum is a lifestyle geek, so you shouldn’t rather expect much fast food, although we have it occasionally, often at special occasions, but generally we try to at least pretend we eat healthily. It is so that guys at my home love meat and they can’t have a lunch without meat, Zofijka is also quite carnivorous, but my Mum and me eat more vegetables, fruit, dairy, stuff like that. SO sometimes we even have two lunches, if we are particularly sick of meat, for me meat could as well not exist, well I like some kinds of meat, but I feel like I could accustom quickly. 😀 But no one of us (except for Misha who is atheist, or pagan, I guess) doesn’t eat meat on Fridays, as most Catholic and practicing people, so unless you’d clearly express you’d like to have some meat and my Mum would be so kind to prepare it just for you, you shouldn’t expect it on Friday. Considering the fact that all or at least those of my readers I know of aren’t Polish, I think I’d like to introduce you to some yummy Polish food, if you’d like it too and if my Mum wouldn’t have anything against, I think she wouldn’t. And the rest would depend on your individual case and other circumstances, I guess lol. So how about you? What could I expect while visiting you? 😀

Question of the day.

Do you have any Easter traditions?

My answer:

We do have some, but they’re nothing very special, just common things in Poland or at least in our area, don’t know much how about other countries, but I guess pretty many of them are rather exclusive to our country or Slavic regions. One of them is the Easter basket, but it’s not the kind of Easter basket people have in the US, or at least so I guess. On Holy Saturday we prepare the Easter basket with bread, salt, eggs, easter eggs, pieces of cakes, and some other basic and not so basic food we’ll be eating on Easter, we decorate it and go to the church with it to be blessed. Usually children do it, as they really like it. You don’t put all the food you’re having on Easter to the basket, although some people do so, to show off, it’s just a symbol. We are quite a religious country, so Christian celebrations occupy quite an important place in our Easter traditions, but actually, I think it’s rather logical because Easter is a Christian holiday after all. So early in the Easter morning people are going for the resurrection mass. Not all people do it, some go late in the evening, or actually at night, for Holy Saturday celebrations linked with the resurrection, so do we, we’re too lazy to jump from the beds at dawn. 😀 And some people go later during Easter for a less festive mass.

And then of course we have the Easter breakfast. Although my family is pretty large, we’ve always eaten Easter breakfasts at home, just my parents and siblings and me, and Misha of course. Honestly, as for food, I much prefer Christmas food, I guess there are more Christmas traditions related to food than it’s on Easter. I guess most people have żurek soup for Easter, usually with an egg and white sausage. Overall, I’m not a big fan of żurek, I wouldn’t eat it at a restaurant or anything like this, but my Mum’s is very yummy. Also, most people have the cake called Easter bab(k)a, made in many different ways depending on the region and other things. Also people tend to have eggs made in different ways or different dishes with eggs. My Mum always makes a salad or a few, and our family loves pierogi to pieces. Generally there aren’t any traditional pierogi for Easter, only for Christmas. But we love them so much, especially my brother, that a few years ago Mum finally came up with the idea she’ll make Easter pierogi, with white sausage – which people associate with Easter here – and cabbage. They’re absolutely delicious, although still, Christmas pierogi are better. 😀 Lots of people make a cake called mazurek, it can be made in many different ways, flavours, with different ingredients, but we’ve never had it and actually I’ve even never eaten it myself. What my Mum does every Easter is a yeast cake called drożdżówka, with different fruit in it, this year we’re having apples.

Another tradition, which is now held only by Zofijka at our home, is decorating Easter eggs. She’s so very good at it. There are many different regional ways people do it, so it’s actually like art for some people, but Zofijka does it in just her own way. I’ve also heard about people playing some games with Easter eggs. People often have the Easter lamb to decorate the table, it’s often made of butter, sugar, cake with icing… but no one eats it actually. 😀

And then of course there are presents, which I guess don’t differ that much from anywhere in the world where Easter is celebrated. We also have a bunny, or a lamb, which as children believe leaves them presents. Many families do so that before you get your present, you need to find it, and they often hide the presents all around the backyard, but I guess now it isn’t so popular as for example when my Mum was a kid. Many people tend to think Easter presents must be more humble, simply and logically, because bunny won’t be able to carry as much as Santa Claus, but because children don’t like it and terrorise their parents, I don’t think many people care about poor bunny’s muscles. So that’s about the Easter Sunday, usually when we have any bigger holidays, people tend to eat a lot and very often meet with the ffamily. We visit my grandparents on Mum’s side and my gramma on Dad’s side, the rest of the family often comes over then too.

Easter Monday is rather funny, although a bit annoying for some as well, ’cause people soak each other. We call Easter Monday śmigus-dyngus. People are going around with bottles of water or other things you can have water in and just pour it over each other, some more gentle people will just sprinkle you, but that’s not a rule. You can have a nice start of the day being drowned in your ow bed lol. No I’m joking o f course, but people really like this day and take advantage of it as much as possible. So it’s better not to go out on the streets, ’cause lots of people are overexcited and take the symbolic holiday too seriously. 😀 But if you know how to have fun, it’s fun. It’s one of Zofijka’s favourite holidays.

And I guess that’s all I could say about our family’s Easter traditions and Polish traditions in general.

How about your traditions? Do you do something special at home on Easter time? Is there something you do in your country that not many people abroad do? 🙂