(Was a) Deacon's Blog

From the Daily Princetonian: The Poland Diet: The dish on American cuisine from overseas by Isia Jasiewicz

This summer, I ate full-buffet breakfasts, three-course lunches and three-course dinners every day for a month: huge slabs of pork, piles of potatoes, creamy vegetable soups, meat-filled dumplings, cheese-filled crepes, bread loaded with butter, heavy cakes, sweet tarts. Nothing was off-limits, and I didn’t make a single trip to the gym. But somehow, I lost weight. How did I do it? The simple answer: I was in Poland.

I can see why you might not believe me. But it’s true. I go to Poland every summer. Every summer, my grandfather force-feeds me homemade cakes. And every summer I come home slimmer. True, I do more walking in Poland than I do here, and living in a Warsaw apartment with no air conditioning makes it easy to break a sweat. There’s also the fact that in Poland the bigger meal traditionally takes place in the middle of the day rather than in the evening, giving you more time to burn it off before you go to bed. But the most important reason I can come up with for the success of the “Poland diet” is surprisingly straightforward: The food is just more natural there than it is here.

We’ve all seen the exposes on the American mass-production of meat, so you probably know that American cows and pigs raised for slaughter are fed growth hormones and antibiotics. Fruits and vegetables, meanwhile, are sprayed with all sorts of chemicals to make them look perfect. And then there’s genetic modification. Did you know that fish DNA is sometimes added to tomatoes to make them last longer?

Now, I’m about as far away from being a biochemist as a fish is from being a cucumber, but common sense tells me that human beings are designed to eat what’s available to them naturally. Digesting artificial hormones, insecticide residue and bizarre genetic creations simply cannot be right.

…

In Poland, you’d be seriously hard-pressed to find an organic vendor or a health-food store anywhere. There’s no need for them. Lining the streets of Warsaw are hundreds of tiny produce stands, bathed in fruity scents, with handwritten cardboard price signs out front. Sometimes my parents and I buy a box of raspberries, and we have to be careful as we grab each berry to make sure there aren’t any bugs in it before we eat it. The extra step is worth it, though. The lack of insecticides can’t keep the fruit flies away, but it does preserve that juicy, tangy taste.

The grocery stores in Poland sell huge slabs of fresh meat, and, of course, an endless variety of kielbasa, and you can rest assured that those sausages are coming from delicious Polish pigs that have been raised on small farms eating scraps of grain and potatoes. Even at the cafeteria of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where I ate every bit of the multi-course meals included in my meal plan this summer, the sweet cream that topped the potato pancakes came from real Polish milk from real Polish cows. My parents say that the food used to be even better; Westernization and globalization have made some farms in Poland turn to America’s mass-production methods. Fortunately, though, a lot of the food in Poland is still made the traditional way, and it’s a good thing, because the same factors that make it delicious also make it healthy.

I can attest first hand that it works. In my first two trips to Poland I lost about 45lbs. I attribute it to different eating habits, most especially the eating schedule, walking and using public transportation, and that the food was natural and fresh each day.

No one I knew had huge refrigerators, just small ones to hold a few things. Everything else was purchased fresh daily.

From Adam Marianski The author has co-authored two books on meat smoking and making sausages. He runs the web site Wedliny Domowe where you can find more information about making quality meats at home. via PG-GB (Bulgaria): The Mystery of Polish Sausage – What is Kielbasa?

Without a doubt the word Kielbasa has worldwide recognition, yet it is also often misunderstood. Kielbasa is the general Polish name for sausage. You cannot walk into a Polish store and say: please give me a pound of kielbasa. The sales lady, surrounded by 50 different kinds of kielbasa, will inevitably reply: yes, but which one? There are well over 100 types of kielbasa, and the word itself is meaningless unless followed up with the proper name: Kielbasa Rzeszowska, Kielbasa Krakowska, Kielbasa Tuchowska, Kielbasa Mysliwska, etc. It is like going into a deli and asking for some cheese. Sure, but which one: American, Provolone, Swiss, Gorgonzola, Gouda, Muenster – you have to provide some details. There is no specific sausage called kielbasa but there are many sausages that carry the word kielbasa as part of the name.

We know of only one sausage that carries the word “Polish” in its name and that is the Polish Smoked Sausage (Polska Kielbasa Wedzona). This is probably what the first immigrants brought with them to America. The problem we face here is that you can find Polish Smoked Sausage in almost every supermarket in the US, and no two are made the same way. Yet Polish Smoked Sausage as been well defined for centuries and everybody in Poland knows what goes inside. We do not intend to become judges in this matter, but instead rely on Polish Government Standards for Polish Smoked Sausage. These rules have remained unchanged for the last 60 years.

Before we anger many people who have been making Polish Smoked Sausage in their own way for years, let’s clarify something further. It’s perfectly fine to add an ingredient that you or your children like into your sausage. You still have the full right to say that you made a better sausage than the famous Polish Smoked Sausage. You may say that your grandfather who came from Poland made the best Polish sausage in the world and we honor that. Maybe he used chicken stock instead of water or maybe he added something else. What we are trying to say is that he was making his own version of the known classic or some other Polish sausage and it could have tasted better for you and your family. We do not dispute that fact. You can of course add anything you like to your sausage, but it will no longer be the original Polish Smoked Sausage (Polska Kielbasa Wedzona) or any other brand named sausage. Once you start changing ingredients, you create your own recipe and you may as well come up with your own name.

1. For centuries Polish Smoked Sausage was made of pork, salt, pepper, garlic and marjoram (optional). Then in 1964 the Polish Government introduced a second version of the sausage that was made of 80% pork and 20% beef. All other ingredients: salt, pepper, sugar, garlic, and marjoram remain the same in both recipes. The marjoram is optional but the garlic is a must.
2. The meat is cured before it is mixed with spices. In the US Cure #1 (sodium nitrite plus salt) is used, in Europe Peklosol (sodium nitrite plus salt) is common.
3. The sausage is stuffed into a large hog casing: 36 – 38 mm and formed into 12″ (35 cm) links.
4. The traditional way was to cold smoke it for 1 to 1.5 days (it had to last for long time).
5. In most cases it is hot smoked today

A little test was performed to see how large American manufacturers make Polish Sausage. Four sausages called Polish Kielbasa or Polish Sausage were bought at the local supermarket in Florida and each of them was produced by a large and well known meat plant. The number of ingredients and chemicals used varied from 10 to 20 and different combinations of meats were used: pork-beef-turkey, beef only, pork-beef. Except the name, none of the sausages had anything to do with the original.

It seems that for the manufacturers any sausage that is smoked (or have liquid smoke added) and stuffed into a 36 mm one foot long casing can be called Polish Smoked Sausage or Polish Kielbasa. It becomes quite clear that manufacturers put any ingredients they like inside of the casing and the name Polish Kielbasa is used just for credibility and to gain the trust of the consumer.

The problem is further magnified by various sites on the Internet that provide countless recipes for making Polish sausages. Yet the mysterious Polish Smoked Sausage is embarrassingly simple to make and all it needs is pork, salt, pepper and garlic.