The truth about Polish food

1. It blends into the background all too well.

Whole Foods has decided to occasionally feature foods from distant places by grouping together (fresh and natural) products, with signs explaining what’s special and unique about them. The first country to be so honored? Poland! Did I notice? No. At one point last week, I wondered why Polish pickles were taking up room in the aisle (by the meat section) given that it wasn’t barbecue season, but that’s all I noticed. Ann wrote me yesterday asking why I haven’t blogged about the Polish display, sending me immediately into a tizzy of remorse. I am making up for it today, giving it more space than it perhaps deserves.

2. It doesn’t lend itself to easy categorization.

Whole Foods says this about it: Polish cuisine is a blend of Slavic and foreign culinary styles (translate: it has no style) and it is distinguished by its use of foods with well-defined flavor profiles (translate: it’s boring, it’s not selling, let’s dress it up some!). They may be sweet, sour, or hot (who did the research on this?), but are always delicious (translate: positive thinking now, you hear??).

3. There’s not enough of it…

At least not enough to fill a display, because there in the middle, I found packets of “Sweet Clementine Organic Sugar Polish.” Ha! Another one of those poor translation jobs – I thought. Polish what? I picked it up, examined it, wondered if they even grew clementines in Poland, and was about to buy a packet to try it out when I noticed that further down it said “exfoliating and moisturizing.” Oh! It’s those hip sales clerks at Whole Foods having themselves a little joke! Add the face polish to the stand of Polish foods! Ha ha ha, thanks a lot. I almost ate the stuff.

4. It’s what’s inside that counts

Polish pilsner is excellent. Really, it is my favorite. I hardly ever drink beer here but in Poland, my sister has me taste a variety of brews and they are outstanding. But the packaging… For example: I was tickled to find EB beer in the display. It was positively providential because I am about to make chocolate crepes tomorrow (with poached strawberries) and believe it or not, my favorite recipe calls for three tablespoons of beer. Normally I would have thought – eh, I have no beer at home, no one will notice the difference. But then, lo and behold, there is EB and there am I and it’s as if we were meant to be together.

The first thing that happened when I unloaded the van in the garage was that the cardboard container holding the six bottles together disintegrated into Polish nothingness.

I need say no more: let me wrap this post up by showing off two photos: one from the Whole Foods display, the other from the unfortunate incident in the garage. Note how close the glass is to the tire that has already been thrice repaired this season. (Btw – if the beer freezes into crushed ice, how long will it retain its over-powering aroma?)

And you don't even have to go to Poland to try some...pickles. And cheese. And beer. (Truly a Wisconsinite put this display together.) 

Polish beer meets American soil. Result? Shattered dreams. 

Another night of work, another night listening to Cincotti.

Did I read that he is only twenty two?

A friend writes that she knew of him several years ago, when he was a college student at Columbia. They say that his mom sometimes helped with the song-writing. So cool. Most moms send care packages to their college kids (I admit to not having done that either). Some fly in when the kid is sick, just to make that bowl of hot soup (another failing of mine – I only sent messages saying “take a vitamin”). Cincotti’s mom went the distance.

Oh but to have a developed talent that can actually prove useful to another!

Metaphors and clichés that speak right to me

I did not watch the inauguration. I did not watch any of the ceremonies or parades either. In fact, I was rather amused at those at the gym who had the parade on their TV screens, as if watching bands and Bushes was a really good distraction against the tedium of the exercise equipment. It wasn’t for me – I read my book, occasionally looking up at the Food Channel, which unfortunately was showing me how to make low-cal thousand island salad dressing – approximately as mesmerizing as watching an inaugural parade.

But the stuff on the inauguration is everywhere (I’m not seeing as much interest in low-cal thousand island dressing). I am in the kitchen looking listlessly at the eggs I am about to scramble and since that is almost as uninteresting as watching the prep for the thousand island low-cal dressing, which, in turn is almost as uninteresting as an inaugural parade – all this lead me to turn on the TV (and to blogging – I’m all about multitasking) and there I have the Bushes and the bands – all of it, in full attire. (All I need is some low-cal thousand island salad dressing and I'll have a full troika of boringness.)

The Bush speech itself has references to captives being set free and going forward with confidence in the triumph of freedom etc etc. Nothing that would cause me to look up. But hark! Did I hear some words that are cliché–ish images and metaphors for concepts that I am all too familiar with? Here’s one – when the ship of communism sank. Wow. Can you imagine the ship, carrying all that communism sinking... Powerful. Secondly, to take the sentence further – when that ship sank, America apparently went on a sabbatical. Now, I know the term sabbatical doesn’t NECESSARILY have academic connotations, but at least in this house, when one says “sabbatical,” one means a year away doing Very Important Research, say in New York or something.

So, I am pleased that Bush is talking about issues that I nostalgically recall (ships with communism on board), or am currently involved with (people who are on sabbaticals). It’s cool to be in sync with your president.

I dedicate this song to all the people out there who try to make those immediately around them feel good about their lives.

… And for the ones who make no such effort – get with it!

[Each year I take a new CD for my friends in Poland – one that exemplifies a pop-jazz trend on this side of the ocean and is lovely to listen to. This year I took Peter Cincotti’s “On The Moon.” I have loved this for months now. I haven’t read a single review that’s anything but glowing. They all say similar things, like this: “Unlike many talented youngsters, Cincotti is neither rebel nor revivalist. Rather, he combines a bit of the bluesy New Orleans raunch of his mentor Harry Connick, Jr. with a distinctly Big Apple sophistication that's as much Brill Building as it is Blue Note. The result is something at once fresh and accessible, based in classic forms yet quite contemporary.”]

From the terrific batch of them, what one song is best for the tenor of this post (and best from the collection, in my opinion) ? -- "Some kind of Wonderful."

I should qualify: you cannot fuss about the banal lyrics. (For example – your embrace – happy place, touch my hand – understand, alright, alright, how sap sap sappy can it get... But if you take it for its entirety, it works. Really.) And note that piano weaving in and around his voice – they say that Carole King had her hand in these notes, I can hear it.

I tell you, I would not have gotten through the last months without these melodies. And yes, of course, it got me through this dark night of work as well.

Blasphemy

To think that you could get away with not only having drive-up coffee houses (Victor Allen’s has had a drive-up for years), but that you would also structure them in such a way as to have one of those “advance request” stations where you shout in your order, to be picked up at the window further down – why, that defies and defaces everything that I love about coffee houses. Starbucks, how could you!*

* I will now admit that this afternoon, I not only did the drive-through for a second day in a row, but I was also very tempted to honk my horn punitively at the car in front who forgot to pre-place the order, thereby resulting in about a 90 second delay for me, as they had to do it at the pick-up window.

English is not my first language…

…but I thought I had certain words firmly under my belt (am I using the phrase correctly?).

For example, when someone says “inauguration” I think of that person stepping into an office, position, or association. Merriam-Webster confirms this:
inauguration: a ceremonial induction into office.

Is Bush switching jobs?

I interrupt Ocean’s typically bland and dispassionate posting to bring you this important announcement: my littlest one turns twenty today

You’re too far away today and way too old!
Here, these (lucky) four are yours, with names that are wishes for you:

...carefree wonder

...garnets and gold

...la vie en rose

...double play

…and so much more.
The truth is, I love you more than roses.

Happy birthday, little one.

Notes from a Spring Semester day

1. Out goes vanity, in comes perky little beret.

Did somebody say warming trend?

Tomorrow: out of the closet, onto the head. 

2. Is there someone sitting on the floor? It does look crowded in here…

Discussing optimal class size once, my fellow bloggers agreed that forty is about perfect to teach: large enough for the class to feel crowded and full, small enough to learn names and develop conversations. Family Law tends to hover around that number. Even when it goes up to 45, if you assume that there will be five rotating between flu and “didn’t feel like going to class today,” you still have the happy forty there to work with.

For a reason I cannot explain (is it the fact that family issues were so much at the core of political discourse this election season?), my Family Law class has over 60 students this semester. Unless there is a three-month long flu epidemic, I can expect 60 faces every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Sadly, this means that there will be at least fifteen whom I will not really hear from much, nor will I recognize them several years down the road as they begin to practice law. Oh, I’ll remember the names – I can tell if a student has never sat in a class of mine. But the faces will be harder to spot.

As I paced the room, I thought about this and I hoped more than the usual handful would stick around this semester after class, to chat and ask those secondary questions. I think I look forward to this contact even more than they do.

3. Conversation at Victor’s with a young barista who has a tattered little cup for tips with the sign “counter intelligence” pasted on it:

So do you think it’s inappropriate today to be wearing shorts? (I let my wool coat hang loosely around my shorts and t-shirt...)
Oh! I didn’t notice! Uh… is there a reason? (He looks furtively around, worried, possibly thinking that he is dealing with an extremely dangerous and armed lunatic; you can see him doing the mental calculation: dare I grab the phone and call the police?)
People have been looking oddly at me, I do not know why…
Uh… I don’t know… It’s cold outside? (I swear he’s moving sideways toward the phone… Time to make a hasty retreat…)
Well, so long, thanks for making the laté extra hot!
Yeah, you’re welcome, sure, yeah, okay…

What, I am supposed to put on my teaching clothes after the gym just to go home?

Welcome to Spring Semester

If it's Tuesday, it must be the bloggers' special: class at 9:30. Is it an innate preference? (Other bloggers teaching at this time? Read A and F; B is at 9:55, clearly preferring her beauty rest.) [For a rousing discussion of innate preferences, read this.]

A winter morning class means you wake up to a sunrise, as seen through color-tinted icicles 

What’s better, the book or the reviews? – part 2

I love Adam Gopnik. I admit it. I mean, I never met Adam Gopnik and I haven’t read a fraction of what he has written (oh, but I read Paris to the Moon, isn’t that enough?), but the things that have come my way have been wonderful. Please do not tell me that he is some kind of a megalomaniac or worse, a despicable human being who has some nasty habit or other, because that would burst my bubble.

When Gopnik writes, I listen. When his articles appear in the New Yorker, I read them BEFORE I get to the cartoons. If he would come on a book tour to Madison I would be one of those fawning idiots that arrives two hours early just to get a seat. [Of course, in reality he would never come to Madison; he is probably one of those east coast snots that believes Madison to be in Alabama, or at the very least Arkansas. No way would his precious New York – Paris foot step in the “dairy state.” I’m guessing now, I know nothing on this at all, just speculating..]

Okay, so why all this Gopnik adoration now? His article in this week’s New Yorker reviewed two recent books on the life of Leonardo da Vinci. It was a wonderful review (of course; I’m biased, I already admitted it). So much so that the magnetic forces, way beyond my control, drew me to Borders late, late this evening, and I picked out the text on da Vinci that sounded absolutely sublime (the one by Nicholl). I stood waiting for the cashier, thumbing through the beautiful pages, pleased and happy… Until I cracked open the other book that I was holding ( Hornby’s “The Polysyllabic Spree”). Hornby is funny. Hornby can often be downright hilarious. In this particular little volume, Hornby wrote about all the books that he had bought and never read. Camic took Hornby to heart.

I thought of a new rule: if it is likely that within the next week I will not read more than at least 100 pages, I will not buy it. I left Borders richer in cash, poorer in spirit.

Blast these reviews! They are worse than commercials for Miss Debby cupcakes.