SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT POLAND AND POLISH SOCIETY

He's a jerk...


Hm? Why?


Did I mention communism here... ?


Beef steak is 'typical English', at least for a typical Pole. I must admit I never tried Shepherds Pie as made properly at home. Whatever I ever got in the supermarket is simply lame. You can eat it (with ketchup), you are happy to forget the experience.


Phh, and I thought you might have had some basic culinary sense, you Scots. 'Every bit as good', scrambled eggs with milk??? I am not going to Scotland. Nope.


Yeah, porridge, thank you very much. Buckwheat rings a bell? I had to check in the dictionary, if you even have all words needed to name the cereals. Well, you do. English has more than a million words, like sitar, or sitatunga. The point is...

Polish breakfast may not be diverse, if you eat it in the same family every day all year round. People happen to be lazy. Don't make me enumerate what can be eaten for breakfast in Poland, please.


ROTFL :)) Carve it in stone, 100 times, I may try and start considering the option of believing you actually mean it.

Or maybe you refer to 'English' Indian food? Handful of rice, four spoons of spice? Topped.


Right. Still quite good. A move in the right direction.


Poles are quite, ehem, solid in posture. No hope to compete with the English, though...

Not Gordon's, I know the lingo already. Never eaten his produce, easy to guess, but what's the point?


I am a bit surprised. Gliwice is not Silesia as such, on the streets you hear mostly Lvovian wail...

Rolady po żydowsku? It's a traditional Silesian dish, no Jews involved. Rolady, modro kapusta, kluski ślonskie. So maybe you know gumiklouzy as well? Curiouser and curiouser...


Damn, you're right. So am I, and proud of it.


Definitely. I didn't even know what haddock was, until I came to London. And I found it in the dictionary, and I still didn't know. Now cod is a fish, everybody knows that. Ling... ? You're confabulating, aren't you? Scrapping the bottom, and with no success, so inventing thingies? Ling doesn't even sound like fish, I expected better of you.

Poser.


Yeah, Ok. Cans... But you're right, I should've done that.


Fkin fabulous! :) But duck is Polish anyway. A bit difficult to cook, but quite widely used in traditional Polish kitchen. Often with cranberries - now with that you Brits made me smile with sympathy :)


Now what can you do 500km from the sea? You have to do with freshwater fish, and depend on cooking talents to make something eatable out of it. With carp, you prepare it the day before, salt it slightly, and (important) cover it with sliced onion, and put in the fridge for the night. Next day you throw the onion away, and use the fish how-ever you want.

Ever tried pstrąg na maśle? Extremely simple (with some tricks), fast, delicious.


Rubbish. Poland was beet-sugar power since the dawn of history, till the night of communism. We helped the poor Africans with free sugar and free tanks, well known fact.

Now you are being unnecessarily cruel, Seanus...


Ketchup might be American, but you haven't tried my aunt's improvisation on the topic. Pure jazz.

Ketchup, for a Pole... you know Hitch Hiker's Guide to Galaxy? For a Pole, especially in England, ketchup is like a towel. You can eat EVERYTHING with it. Everything you can get in England, that is.


Right you are. Gliwice is a Little Kraków. Upper Silesia as a whole is a matter-of-fact area, acquired taste, although it's changing now a bit.

i know it when i see a polish person, you can always tell. that and their accent that i'd recognise. plus in uk most cashiers wear name tags :)


it's true about the change, they always want some change the bunch of tramps lol. but in general i find service much MUCH faster in Poland. maybe when they see a foreign person (foreign people stand out a lot) they slow down just to annoy you i dunno ;)


i would LOVE to see a British cashier working on a till in Poland with a queue building up and everybody dying to get through ;D

@Amathyst, @shush....

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Says volumes about your taste :)

But you might be right, actually. Restaurants are not Polish forte. You get good food at friend's.

Come to think of it, I remember only a few places in Poland, where I was really happy with what they served. For money, I mean. Private occasions are a completely different story.

Um, sorry. I missed them 8(eight) dishes. Makes how many in total? Twenty?

Scouse is mostly like eintopf, as far as I know. Very local, extremely unregulated. Local to poor regions, that is. Kedgery, now this I never heard of... Whatever, I don't suspect I'd miss any of them in Poland, sorry. Or in Greece. Or Spain. Or Lithuania. Or Mexico. Did I miss any place? Yeah, i did. Like, loads of bags of places.

Sunday Lunch... :)) The name says it, doesn't it? You have one dish especially for Sundays. One. No need for fancy names, everybody knows what it is. The Sunday Lunch In It's Full Glory! :)

There is a special culinary occasion in Poland, the Christmas Eve. In every family this supper is sacrosanct, the menu changes hardly ever, it's like a bonding thing. 12 dishes, mostly, each for every apostle. Yet when you meet somebody from another region, and the conversation wanders to customs and food, then the common series of questions is: what soup for Wigilia? how fish? sweets, what kind? how interesting... :)


Yeah, CAMRA, the desperate effort. Now get out of the Tube anywhere in Central London, and try to find a pub serving ales. I am a polite person, so I'd rather not just pop in and out without getting a pint, thus my first ale, most often, has to humbly put up with residuals of all sorts of sorry lagers. Just because they were there first. Outrageous.

Shame, really. Yes, 1000s mini breweries, but struggling more and more. The Irish at least stick to the Guinness like their very personal existence depended on it.


That's my point exactly. You have a handful of Chefs, and a couple of Fashionable Fkin Most Expensive Restaurants, we have food. You enjoy watching cooks on TV, munching stinking takeaway, we go use the kitchen.


:) I am not a racist, actually. I believe that a genetically 100% English person, raised in a proper culinary environment, can enjoy food as any other human. You have to start early, though, like maybe 6 months of age.

Most Poles do not have to try anything else than Polish kitchen, and be utterly happy. Polish kitchen is both eclectic and quite distinctively Polish. The English boast of loving tikka masala, so very worldly of them, but it takes a Polish peasant woman to show them how to make a tasty food of it. And then they shut up and start nagging about maybe we could, you know, like marry, or what, whadya think.

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You must be living on top of Polish restaurant. Try to move to Crystal Palace and find a decent bread, not to mention some sausage.

Try moving to Poland and finding a sausage that hasn't been stuffed with all kinds of crap, is the term BEEF burger the same there?

Well said! I bow to you, Sir (or Madam, as the case may be) :-)
BTW, the dinner I cooked today (eclectic Polish-Czech-crazy cuisine) made me fall in love with myself all over again ;-)

From life. I've been here for 6 years, I met Poles from all sorts of backgrounds, most of them simple folks, admittedly. And I was surprised myself how they react to what can be eaten here, whoa, eyes wide open. And I wasn't surprised when they reverted to potatoes and home brewed pork, retaining only selected dishes and places from 'the unmatched variety of London cuisine'. Selected like already mentioned kebab in Colindale, or Chinese in the nearby Edgware.

Tourists, as we already agreed, take it as a point of honour to bring something new back home, and glory be. Migrants, they eat to survive.


Wrong, Seanus. Takes a long time to convince you, but I have seen it. The point is, and I repeat it, experimenting is not the same as worshipping any abortive attempt at cooking. Taste kicks in.


Yeah, I know, I've seen it, and I witnessed the ecstasy. How inventive. Unbelievingly imaginative. Just think of it, you can dip a strip of toast in soft boiled egg, instead of eating them in turns.

Sorry, Seanus. This kind of experimentation is done by toddlers in Poland, and possibly all over the world. Nobody denies them the simple pleasure, and some people keep the habit till they die, but to make The Traditional National Dish out of it... :)))


And justly so. Skipping breakfast is a rather new invention in Poland. Sadly, it is spreading.

(i don't eat breakfasts too :/ )


'Beef burger' is crap everywhere. As for Polish sausages, your info is outdated. I remember pasztetowa stuffed (proverbially) with toilet paper, but this was the reality of gierkowszczyzna. Same as krakowska full of 'fish flour'. Nowadays even factory made, plastic wrapped Polish sausages are way ahead of British productions.

To put it in a proper perspective, sausages are made from meat that can't be used in a better way. Junk food, actually, second class. Now to make it good, it takes skill.

Some like Pudzian, some don't.

Tak się mówi w takich przypadkach ;) ;)

Try Fisherman's Pie or Admiral's Pie. Both are tasty options!

No, it's just that the eggs are pretty good :)

Porridge makes you big and strong. It's the stuff of legends!

The English like flavour but I guess the Poles do too with the level of salt that gets added.

Kluski śląskie I think you meant to say ;) ;)

Ling is a fish, yes. It's a white fish that I used to eat.

We have many good home-made soups too. All on the net :)

Polacy również jedzą rzeczy z zurawiną.

Trout on a butter base? That sounds like sth I would eat :) I might give that a try.

Well, the Germans are the inventors according to all the sources I've checked.

Toddlers don't do that at all. It really draws out the runny yolk and I've never seen it done here. Polacy wolą na twardo. They don't like soft-boiled eggs.

Nott, it comes through contact. Poles might change their ways with more foreign options but I doubt it. Brits have far more to choose from in terms of international brands.

Im not in to these things but my mate had Aberdeen Agnus burgers at her BBQ..I have to admit I eat one and it was rather nice, it actually tasted of meat...so...burgers are not all the same.


Not if they're proper Cumberland sausages or Irish sausages...They're full of meat.


Now we're talking, can I addd Cullen Skink whilst we're on the whole fish thing! Heaven on the taste buds! You cant beat a good fish dish in Britain!


My pea and ham soup is a legend in its own lunch time :D


A touch of golden syrup and a pinch of salt :D

I just can't believe you all put up for so long with my chauvinist rant :) Moderators included.


Well, yeah. My cousin met him on the plane and she says he's quite a nice guy really, accessible and kind, polite and helpful. What I most don't like about him, is that I go to a pub, and the first question is 'where you from?', of course. Um, Poland. Oh yeah! Putsianovsky!

Well. Why not, say, Chopin? Or Lem? Or Kubica, at least.

Ok, it was some 3 years ago. Still, I don't like him.


Seen them, had no courage after other experiences. But Ok, thanks.


And cheap. Still, they deserve some respect. As milk does.


That was spinach, Seanus :) You getting patriotic, or what? :)


hahaha. Very funny.

Anyway. You know the phrase 'the salt of the earth'? Or 'with a pinch of salt'? Salt might be un-PC and even poisonous in big quantities, but, and many reasonable medicine doctors will agree with it, food should give you pleasure, then it is the most healthy. A pinch of slat makes a whole lot of difference.


Exactly, kluski ślonskie. Or ślónskie, actually. Or śloonskie, as the modern silesian orthography puts it.

So you don't know gumiklouzy. Good. There must be something about Poland that one Brit doesn't know :)


Liar. There's not so many fish in the world, Seanus. Stands to reason.


You Scotts, possibly. I don't argue, never been further north than Brumagem.

Oh, Scotch Eggs, good idea, I approve. Just add some pepper and salt. Or ketchup. But the idea is good, kudos.


Exactly. Mostly in the East, so I was a bit surprised to find out that this is a well known English condiment. Well done.


Aah, now you talkin. Trout fried on butter. Get yourself a fresh trout, preferably gutted already. I mean, guts out, head off. All fins and skin stays. Don't wash it, except a very symbolic rinse to ritually satisfy your European sense of hygiene, as the slime adds to flavour, strange but true. Smear it generously with ground black pepper inside. Roll it in flour, so that you can't see the skin. Heat up cleared(*) butter, fry the trout on it, 5 mins one side, turn over, 3 mins the other side (if I remember well, but I'd say it's 80% exact. 85% even). Spray with lemon juice (well, a slice of lemon, hover over the fish, squeeze, you know it), serve with Polish bread, preferably mixed wheat-rye. Use fork. Well.

(*) Indians know it too. Put your butter in a convenient pot, heat it gently until it melts, and continue heating, rather gently. You'll see some froth on the surface, skim it and throw it away as soon as it appears, until it doesn't show any more. On the bottom you'll see that white stuff, slimy-like by appearance. Pour the butter into another container, leaving the white stuff from the bottom, it's rubbish. Now you have cleared butter. It keeps long even without refrigerating, and you can use it for frying without fear of heart-attack. It doesn't burn easily, cos you threw away that white stuff and the foam.

Cleared butter is important here, or you won't be able to fry your trout properly.

Enjoy. And report.

oh, I can't advise you on what to wash it down with, except that it should be something dry and delicate.

EDIT: SHALLOW fry.


You don't [b]have[/] to rub my nose in it, do you? Anyways, Internet if full of sh1t, right.

Poland was, however, a sugar power, this can't be denied.


Yeah, yeah...


Well. Seems to me, sometimes you do forget you are a stranger in a strange land, don't you? :)

Exactly, Amathyst! Cullen Skink is rarely heard of outside of Scotland. It is very tasty!

Fisherman's or Admiral's Pie are culinary delights :)

Yeah, dairy is very good in Scotland and Poland. Probably England and Wales too :)

It's what we say in the UK. That porridge makes a man of you. Women just have to worry that it'll put hairs on their chest ;0 :) Spinach is only for Popeye, didn't you know? ;)

A pinch of slat? I'd stick to salt if I were you ;) ;) Just kidding! Salt is good for drawing out foods that you want to taste :)

These hicks here say ślonskie ;) ;) Just like kaj jesteś instead of gdzie jesteś? LOL Ah well, regional variations enrich the collective whole :)

Read and learn,
britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342310/ling ;) ;)

Why bring Walter's family into it? Do you know Walter Scott through Ivanhoe or what? ;) ;) Oh, us Scots you mean? ;) ;)

My wife is a big fan of Scotch Eggs too and has made them a couple of times for me here. Gotta love Polish wives (when they aren't angry or checking up on you or frustrated or asking for money or anything else ;) ;))

I know because I bought horseradish with cranberry the other day. Provitus chrzan z zurawiną, tasty!

I like the trout recipe :) :) In fact, I could cycle out to Sierakowice which is about a 25-min cycle out to the countryside. They have a pond/small lake there in which they catch fresh trout. I just need to carry my gun with me in case the mohair berets come out with their umbrellas and pre-election frustration ;) ;) Nah, just kidding! My face shows I am a friend of humanity and those old biddies smile at me so I must be doing sth right :)

Are you sure that that white powder wasn't sth else? ;) ;)

Are you singing the Beatles? Yeah yeah yeah :)

Poles are not so different. I guess I don't see it as I have lived here for almost 6 years.

And I live in London, never ever heard of it. So much for the English eagerly using their limitless opportunities to enrich their cuisine :)


Seanus, just face the walk, and put it straight, no evasive maneuvers any more: Do You, The Scottish People, Mix MILK Into Your Scrambled Eggs, Or Not?!


So why didn't you tell this to my mother then, smart guy?! Half the breakfasts of my childhood were ruined by this... well,, let me put it mildly: **** **** ****** of a ****.

Note the dot at the end. NO exclamation marks!!

And I hate porridge too.


'Hicks'. This is a Varsovian perspective. They are natives, legitimate and hereditary, ancient and proud, and no Warsaw prick will tell them how to speak!

BTW, it's 'kaj żeś jest' :) Impressed, anyway.


So you're a hacker too... operating from a foreign IP...


haha. So now this is my fault that an innocent Polish child's little brains got brutally scarred by a treacherous foreigner. Rob Roy, though. Ivanhoe, I saw it later on TV, and the author's name was in small print. And we were galloping around the yard, yelling: Ajwenhoooe, Ajwenhoooe, dadamdamdam tamtamdamdam, Ajwenhoooe. Damn Scotts.


Whiner. Typical Polish whining husband. That's what being a husband is about, to be checked up on. The sooner you learn it, the sooner you'll be happy. When she stops checking, now then you're in trouble...


Now this IS an experimentation. Could be good, no argument here.


yeah. I bet you have a huge protective pendant with Holy Mary, dangling from your neck. Makes wonders.

Gun-toting fugitive hacker... a cyclist... the picture starts to fill up...

Sierakowice - my friend lived somewhere there. They bred rabbits, I smuggled them during the martial law in a backpack, 'siekiera motyka' style. And we made booze from sugar, happy days... Not actually your typical moonshine, we had glass apparatus with a rectification column, fully controlled distillation, then potato slices and activated coal, 96% alcohol as end result. Needed hell of a lot of patience...


Slime, I said :) Milk protein, most probably.


Oh, this was trippled? My memory isn't what it was...

Now what it was, then...


You're Scottish... I have my little private theory, that the melody of the language expresses the nation's character. Thus Scots are to English like Silesians are to Poles, and quite a similar mentalities, allowing for all differences. You are living in a border zone, which is the whole Silesia now, and I suppose you might feel a little bit less at home somewhere else, although not necessarily unhappy...

Ach, it's just appreciation of British offerings ;) ;)

Do we mix milk into scrambled eggs? I think some do, yes. I can't say how common it is, though.

Your mother has hairs on her chest? ;)

By Kraków standards too ;)

Hacker? Only on the footie pitch :)

Damn Scotts? Walter's family were ok, you know!? :)

I take it she checks your underwear everyday then? :)

no comments...


SHE didn't eat it! She made ME to!


Centusie. Who cares.


Yeah, right. No worries, I am not a snitch. Un-Polish thing, snitching.


Damn cultural invasion. Like if we didn't have Sienkiewicz.


Wow... you should chain her up to the kitchen table, and put more locks on the door. She's a treasure, man.

Me, happily divorced :)

Un-Polish thing? Geez, I've heard countless cases and had it done to me. Why do you kid yourselves so much? It's maybe not so widespread but it happens for sure.

Sien who? ;) ;)

What happened to those marriage vows? ;)

Legacy of communism. Fallen standards. And you better let me follow my ideals.


You naughty boy, you.


I cheated. Those pre-marital courses, you know? The priest thundered that who doesn't attend the Mass every Sunday, he's not a true Catholic. I always respected them priests.

You can follow any ideals you choose, as long as you don't harm others in so doing ;)

I know who Sienkiewicz is, give me some credit :)

I gotta have a conversation with a priest once. It would be interesting!

You Wiccan, or what? Not that I have anything against them. ****** sanctimonious *****.


I know you know. You are just testing my proverbial Polish patience.


You bet. Just apply your non-confrontational style, and you can ask any question. Like: do innocent babies go to Hell, and why?

I'd not advise you to ask if they have underwear under the robe. I never asked.

Wiccan? What on earth is that?

Cierpliwość jest cnotą :)

Well, finding out that another group of men don't wear undies as us Scots when wearing kilts is not the kind of cultural 'exchange' I'm looking for ;)

Yeah, I'm pretty non-confrontational. Living in Japan for 2 years teaches you that. I just wonder how realistic some priests are. I'd happily interview one.

An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will. Wiccan Rede. A new religion re-born in England, somewhere in 1950ies. They do magic...


so they fkn say...


just don't

:))

although I suspect you'd be disappointed.


Choose a younger one, to be on the safe side. When gently pressed, they appear quite realistic, and, like, a bit lost...

Hmm...was Wiccan ill? ;)

When interviewing a priest, I'm sure he'd ask me about his new Alfa Romeo :)

Some disappointment can be positive then :)

Yeah, plenty virtues on the go.

Tsk, tsk.. bashing poor priests...

Poor is not the word. They profit from other peoples' weaknesses. An intelligent mind can interpret the word of God without the need for intermediary conduits. Get fit, awaken your senses and then tell me that you need priests ;) ;) ;)

but you need somebody to confess to... Stands to reason.

Senses are bad. Spirit is the thing.

Seems I am getting better in it...

God is around you, confess to him. He listens to those that are sincere :)

With heightened senses comes the spirit :)

Better in what?

That's the problem exactly... sincerity *sigh*


Free-thinker, huh? You better speak to that priest soon. Still not too late, but beware.


trolling... shush...

Sincerity is another one of those virtues I think ;)

It's good to be free thinking, if only after red wine :) :)

Shush is not here. She is likely sleeping ;)

Feeling God is of huge theological importance. It is written in Romans that no intermediary is needed between man and God. Other passages in the Bible back that up. However, there are the Apostles who complicate the position. I've watched detailed theological discussions on this. Nerdy? Maybe, but better than spending time the way modern slobs do.

No, it isn't. Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility. No Sincerity.


Free-thinking is a sin against the Holy Spirit, and as such, unforgivable. Please repent...

Let me quote the Source: Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise.

See? REPENT!!!


shhh... ushhh...


Romans. How can you properly interpret the Holy Writ without being properly educated first? It's a difficult text.

Not in the Polish list anyway ;) ;)

God told me I could. God rejected communism :)

I often went to church as a kid and scored 100% in RE :)

You think I took it off the top of my head? Wiki, copy&paste. Official list of Virtues.

REPENT!!!


...

you're in deep sh1t, bro... don't listen to those voices... I am being dead serious now... honest...


So why did you abandon the path? Such a promising young man.

It' still not too late, have hope.

Stop looking at those citation needed parts ;)

Voices? From where?

Hope is always with me :)