When we worked in Poland in 1991, Ellen and I lived on the Baltic coast. Yesterday I went to the “Baltic Deli” on Days Road here in Kingston and it was a bit of a trip back. At the time I was preparing to go east 12 years ago this month, people were concerned I would starve, that the myths of the pervasive Soviet foodlines were true. While it would have been prudent to carry your own stock of peanut butter into Russia, life in a Polish resort town was pretty sweet in the culinary sense.
Once, at the farmers market – where Siberians who had travelled for days by train sold white fox pelts you could buy for Polish zloty – my fellow teacher Kay Batory [of the Kracow Batorys, who opened for the Bay City Rollers, who drove to Poland from England including over an East German cobblestone highway] and I found a little granny, a babka, with a couple of jars of pickled mushrooms and one softball sized smoked ham sitting in front of her. We did not care if it had hung in her old stockings over a candle for months – it was like eating butter. Yesterday, I found a very good approximation at the “Baltic Deli”, smoked pork tenderloin sliced paper thin as paper. They also have chleb, Polish rye bread, and the little foil packs of spreadable cheese which come in different flavours but are all pretty much labelled ser zloty. These may come out of large industrial plants in gloomy suburban backwaters – but they are still tasty. Oddly they often have the whole address of the manufacturer on the front of the label in case I want to mail them thanks for their tastiness to
LACPOL
PHZ SM sp. z o.o. Warsawa
ZAKLAD W TORUNIU
ul. Podgorska 6/10 Polska
I am also assured by the wrapper that it is lagodny. Surely there is some room even in Naomi Klein’s world for a wee bit of branding here. Best of all they have a supply of a smoked paprika sausage which is the key ingredient in bigos, a hunters stew of their version of saurkraut calledkapusta, wild mushrooms and various meats. Not to be consumed on a first date. My first big breakthrough in Polish was reading a sign at a diner in Koszalin which said their bigos wasdomovy – homestyle! Pass the chleb, babka.