Pumpkin and Rhubarb in Kraków

I know it's a long shot, but does anyone know where to buy pumpkins or rhubarb in Kraków? I want to make some winter pies, but apple and lemon are starting to get old. Thanks!

Fruit & veg are really seasonal here so the last of the pumpkins was in November I'm afraid - the only type you might get now is in cans or somewhere expensive like Alma, the Likus store on the Rynek or the healthy food shop on ul. Krupnicza. Rhubarb won't be around for another few weeks.

Does that mean that you can not buy fresh fruits like berries, pineapples, mango's, oranges and fresh vegetables like broccoli, peppers, cabbage, green beans, tomato's and the such in the winter months in Poland ?

What would make you think that you cannot buy these items throughout the year? You just need to know where to go.

Thank you terri.

Johnny, to answer your question, if you live in a city with a big supermarket/hipermarket you can buy most things all year round. However, you will generally never see things like strawberries, raspberries and soft fruits of that kind out of season. Pineapples and mangos are not that common either. You do get pomegranates and passion fruit and of course bananas and citrus fruits are available all year round as they're imported. In a nutshell you could say that if it's grown locally you will generally only get it when it's in season. The OP was looking for rhubarb in February, you won't get it and that's that. There's plenty of pumpkin though which he was also asking about. Anything not available locally can be imported but prices are very high and Poles are a thrifty lot. Even those who can afford it will not pay four times the normal price for a cauliflower - and rightly so!

Thanks Ms. Atch.
How would I have known without your kind response.

I have frozen rhubarb and it works great.


Well at my age my philosophy is good food is not cheap and cheap food is not good.
If it is healthy for you I buy it.
I eat No grains (bread), pasta's, white rice, potato's, ground meats nor do I drink soda pop or sugary drinks.
This justifies me the extra money to buy the more expensive foods that keep me lean at fighting weight.
Fresh berries, nuts and greens are a must no matter the price tag in my book.
Most can be bought during season and put in the freezer.
I'm sure people in Poland have freezers don't they.

With seasonal fruits and vegetables, it's the other way around. At peak season, they are at their best and cheapest. Off season, they are tasteless and costly.

Not everyone by any means. Many people live in very small apartments with tiny kitchens and don't have room for a freezer. Others simply can't afford to buy one and couldn't afford the extra electricity it would cost to run it. However there is a tradition in Poland of preserving and pickling. In the Autumn the supermarket has a big promotion on jars of all sizes and you see everybody buying them. The seasonal fruits and veggies are then sold off dirt cheap.

Polish people tend to eat seasonally and they don't expect to eat summer foods in winter. Also many traditional dishes that are not the healthiest by western standards remain very popular. There is still an enormous market for processed meats (wędliny) and sausages. Often on a Saturday, you will see people buying a big selection of processed meats to see them through the week. They like to eat it for supper with pickled veggies.

This is what I can't understand, processed foods are very unhealthy and are linked to cancer here in the U.S. yet the Polish chow down on processed food and have a very low cancer rate compare to the U.S. or Ireland which I think has the highest cancer rate in the world.

Must be the preservatives and methods that the Polish use to cure their meats.
I can't wait to come visit Poland and take the cuisine for a test drive.

Denmark apparently has the highest cancer rate in the world and Ireland is in the top ten. Rates of cancer are much lower in Poland. But there are so many types of cancer that it's only part of the story. For example, there are still a lot of smokers in Poland and the air is much more polluted than Ireland. Not surprising then that Poland is number nine in the world for instances of lung cancer while Ireland doesn't even figure in the top twenty.

Was just in the supermarket Johnny and they had pineapples :)) They actually had a great range of fruit today including lychees and kumquats but that's not always the case. However the prices were high. I saw some 'exotic' fruits priced at 30zł per kilo. Now if you bear in mind that you can buy apples at the moment for 2zł per kilo that gives you an idea of how expensive things can be if you want anything beyond the bog standard, everyday basics. I also saw imported strawberries, don't remember seeing them before but they were horrible looking things, very anaemic and watery looking. No discerning person would buy them, they'd have absolutely no flavour at all, waste of money.

Another thing regarding prices, I've noticed that the price of citrus fruits varies all through the year with no apparent logic. Sometimes lemons will cost 5zł per kilo and then two weeks later they're 12zł per kilo in the same shop. Don't know about America but in Ireland that would be very strange. Things like lemons are generally priced consistently throughout the year. You may see a slight variation depending on the suppliers but they won't jump to double the price.

Things here like pineapples are sold per each and not by the kilo.
Pineapples never cost more then 1 zloty each and are available year around.
Lemons are sold per each.
I don't know the coins in Poland but lemons can range from 1/4 zloty for four of them to 1 zloty each.
Depends on the size and quality.
Fresh strawberries are available year around here also but are shipped in from Mexico.
A quart of them would cost about 1 zloty.
Thank you for the education and sharing with me Atch.

Worth a look at the wholesale price. These are the prices in Poznań - fresh-market.pl/ceny/ceny_z_rynkow_hurtowych/poznan - and almost every shop/market place will be sourcing their produce from here. If you check the website, you'll get your local wholesale prices there.

If you ever need to buy a large amount of fruit/vegetables, you can buy in these places too.