Not Polish

Whoa. Shelley and I had some yummy Polish food at lunch yesterday because the sklep is also a restaurant. Everyone else... mmm. Not so much. Because the results of our hours shopping for ingredients and preparing a really... um, involved meal were not so good. I will spare the details of our thoroughly misguided attempt at preparing pierogis (dumplings) and sernik (Polish cheesecake). Thankfully, we did have kielbasa to salvage the dinner.

Unfortunately, we also had the cheesecake. I was sadly going to forgo eating any of the delicious sounding cheesecake topped with a layer of thinly sliced peaches, meringue, and finished off with a crumb topping. (The operative word in that sentence was "sounding".) Everyone at the table sampled a bite of the treat that oddly resembled scrambled eggs with peaches. Shelley looked thoughtful. Don proceeded to scoop up a bite of the stuff to offer me saying, "You won't be breaking your fast [from sweets] with this..." before putting the single most vile bite of food into my mouth ever created. Holee cow. I can now say that I have eaten something so vile that I spontaneously cried. Wow. Whoo. Oomph. Apparently there are two kinds of "twarog" cheese, and we did not use the right one. Imagine dry cottage cheese with (Oops.) twice the butter called for in a dish that ended up reminiscent of cake batter with cottage cheese, a hint of peaches, and finished off with a highly bitter aftertaste. Oh my, my, my.

I still stand by the company. Despite five hours invested in a meal that I would feel guilty serving the dogs, I can honestly say the day was fun. I am not a Polish cook. My appreciation of good Polish food grows every time I attempt to prepare it. But I would not trade the fun of watching Shelley try to get instructions from three women all speaking rapid-fire Polish as they each weigh in on how much bacon we need for the pierogi filling... only to discern that one of them is underestimating because there are two pounds left in the meat counter--- and she wants one pound. Or watching the girls roll out the dough and cut circles for the dumplings before everyone gathered in the kitchen to begin filling and sealing our little pockets of potato, cheese, and bacon, followed by all three kids anxiously peering into the pot to see if we had any "floaters" that were ready to eat. Or the combination of chagrin and laughter at the discovery that the carefully filled pockets had all stuck together on the plate while waiting for cooking. Any day filled with laughter is okay in my book even if I eat something that literally brings me to tears.