Category Archives: food

by | 1 July 2026 · 12:33 am

Changing USSR Nationality Policy

From The Russo-Ukraine War: The Return of History, by Serhii Plokhy (W. W. Norton, 2023), Kindle pp. 18-21:

The USSR began its life with massive affirmative action for the non-Russian cultures outside the Russian Federation. But cultural Russification of the borderlands returned in the late 1920s and early 1930s, when Stalin emerged as Lenin’s sole successor and began preparing the country for war. One reason for the change was industrialization, which, given Russian control of the all-Union party, came with the advance of Russian as the language of administration, science, and technology. Another reason was accommodation of the Russians as the largest nationality in the now Soviet empire, along with concern to integrate the non-Russian nationalities culturally so that they would not switch sides in the coming war.

In Ukraine, the largest non-Russian republic of the USSR, the change of nationality policy was signaled by show trials against the Ukrainian intelligentsia. The first such trial, which took place in 1929, was followed by an attack on the Ukrainian party cadres and the peasantry, which reached its peak during the Holodomor, or the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33. A number of key Ukrainian communists committed suicide, while others were dismissed from their positions and jailed. As many as four million people were starved to death as part of a concerted campaign to crush the peasant resistance to the collectivization and maximize grain delivery for Soviet industrialization. In the month leading up to the start of the famine, Stalin warned his associates that such measures were needed to prevent loss of control over Ukraine. The Holodomor turned Ukraine, previously known as the breadbasket of Europe, into a land devastated by famine.

World War II led to another shift in Moscow’s policy toward the nationalities. Although Russocentrism was not abandoned, more manifestations of Ukrainian and other non-Russian patriotism were allowed. The Soviet takeover of Poland’s eastern provinces following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was justified as liberation of fellow Ukrainians and Russians from Polish capitalist oppression. It was also celebrated in ethnic terms as the reunion of western Ukraine and western Belarus with the corresponding Soviet republics. The old imperial reunification paradigm was back, dressed this time in Ukrainian and Belarusian clothing. After Hitler attacked the USSR in June 1941, non-Russian nationalism was mobilized once again, especially in Ukraine, to encourage patriotic resistance to the German invasion. Once German forces occupied all of Ukraine with the assistance of their Romanian and Hungarian allies, Moscow did not mind promoting the Ukrainian language, culture, and history to mobilize resistance and inspire the loyalty of more than six million Ukrainians drafted into the Red Army. The Ukrainian card was also played at home and abroad to justify the military takeover and annexation of western Ukrainian lands ruled by Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania during the interwar period.

In 1914 the Russian army had captured the city of Lviv, then under Austrian rule, justifying it as liberation of fellow Russians—that was the tsarist authorities’ official term for the local population. As World War II drew to an end, the Soviets played not the Russian but the Ukrainian national card when they integrated Lviv into the Ukrainian SSR, although the city was largely Polish in ethnic composition, with Jews (largely exterminated during the Holocaust) as the second-largest ethnic group.

While the authorities were eager to exploit Ukrainian ethnicity to justify Soviet westward expansion, they did not welcome or tolerate every expression of Ukrainian patriotism and nationalism. The radical Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), formed in the western Ukrainian lands during the interwar period, was considered particularly dangerous. Its members were known to the Soviets as Banderites: their leader, Stepan Bandera, and some of his followers were imprisoned in German concentration camps after a failed attempt to declare an independent Ukrainian state in alliance with Germany and against the USSR in the summer of 1941. The Nazi occupiers, who regarded Slavs as subhuman, deported more than two million Ukrainians to Germany as slave laborers and persecuted Ukrainian patriots of every description.

The two branches of the OUN, one led by Bandera, the other by his less-known rival Andrii Melnyk, turned against the Germans by the end of 1941. In 1943 the Bandera faction assumed leadership of the 100,000-strong Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a guerrilla force that fought against the Polish Home Army and the Nazis and, later, against the Red Army for control of western Ukraine. The Ukrainian nationalist insurgency was not completely crushed until the early 1950s, the last years of Stalin’s rule, earning the designation of the strongest and longest-lasting movement of resistance to the Soviets anywhere in east-central Europe.

The Soviets did their best to discredit the Ukrainian nationalists by condemning their early collaboration with the Germans and exposing the participation of some OUN members in the Holocaust and the ethnic cleansing of Poles during the German occupation of Ukraine. They also made major concessions to the Ukrainian language, which became dominant in western Ukrainian government institutions, replacing Polish. But the Sovietization of western Ukraine was carried out mainly by repression. Not only the captured fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army but also civilians suspected of helping the insurgents were resettled or deported en masse to gulag camps in the Russian SFSR, making Ukrainians the largest ethnic group of political prisoners in the Soviet Union—a phenomenon documented by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago.

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Filed under economics, food, Germany, labor, migration, military, nationalism, Poland, Ukraine, USSR, war

by | 28 June 2026 · 12:59 am

Polish Realia: Italian Pizza

Here are some informative paragraphs from the placemats at Tutti Santi, home of “legendary Italian pizza” in Kielce, Poland.

Włosaka pizza to setki lat historii. Na to, jak smakuje, ma wpływ jakość produktów, ale tez wiele lat poszukiwan, odkryc i zaangażowania ludzi, dla których pizza stała się życiową pasją. Zamów swoją ulubioną pizzę i rozsmakuj się w tej wyjątkowej historii.
Italian pizza embodies centuries of history. Its taste is shaped not only by the quality of the ingredients but also by years of exploration, discovery, and the dedication of people for whom pizza has become a lifelong passion. Order your favorite pizza and savor this unique story.

Włoskie Rzemiosło Italian Craftsmanship
Przepis na prawdziwą, włoska pizzę to tajemnica, do której dostęp mają tylko nieliczni. Tutti Santi to jedyna restauracja w Polsce, w której spróbujesz pizzy według receptury Mistrza Włoch i Europy Valerio Valle. Ciasto jego autorstwa jest delikatne, cienkie i lekko chrupiące.
The recipe for authentic Italian pizza is a secret accessible to only a few. Tutti Santi is the only restaurant in Poland where you can taste pizza made according to the recipe of Italian and European Champion Valerio Valle. The dough he created is delicate, thin, and slightly crispy.

Cierpliwość Patience
Ciasto według autorskiej receptury Mistrza Valerio Valle wymaga czasu i cierpliwości. Dojrzewanie ciasta trwa 48 godzin, w tym czasie zachodzą w nim niezbędne procesy, dzięki którym zawsze jest pyszne i lekkostrawne.
The dough, based on Master Valerio Valle’s original recipe, requires time and patience. The dough undergoes a 48-hour maturation process, during which essential changes occur that ensure it is always delicious and easy to digest.

Pomidory Tomatoes
Pomidory nie zostały odkryte we Włoszech, ale to Włosi odkryli ich potencjał i zamienili je w symbol włoskiej kuchni. Nasz sos tworzymy tylko z włoskich pomidorów, które dojrzewają w gorącym słońcu południa, co daje im wyątkową słodycz.
Tomatoes were not discovered in Italy, but it was the Italians who discovered their potential and turned them into a symbol of Italian cuisine. We make our sauce exclusively from Italian tomatoes ripened in the hot southern sun, which gives them exceptional sweetness.

Mąka – Sekret Ciasta Flour – Secret to the Dough
Wyselekcjonowaliśmy specjalny rodzaj włoskiej mąki o odpowiedniej zawartości białka. Mąkę sprowadzamy prosto z włoskich młynów, które od blisko 200 lat należą do jednej rodziny, gdzie przez pokolenia przekazuje się najlepsze tradycje i wielowikowe doświadczenie.
We have selected a special type of Italian flour with the appropriate protein content. We source our flour directly from Italian mills that have belonged to the same family for nearly 200 years—mills where the finest traditions and centuries of experience have been passed down through generations.

Naturalny Ogień Natural Fire
Nasze pizze wypiekamy w specjalnych kopułowych piecach opalanych drewnem. Od czterech pokoleń są one produkowane przez jedną rodzinę Valoriani. Od ponad 100 lat specjalizuje się ona w tradycyjnych piecach chlebowych, wykorzystując moc ognia, właściwości lawy wulkanidznej i widzę na temat rzemieślniczych metod wypieku ciasta.
We bake our pizzas in special wood-fired dome ovens. For four generations, they have been produced by the Valoriani family. For over 100 years, they have specialized in traditional bread ovens, harnessing the power of fire, the properties of volcanic lava, and expertise in artisanal baking methods.

Unikalne Smaki Unique Tastes
Do przygotowania każdej pizzy w Tutti Santi wykorzystujemy selektywnie wybrane produkty, które sprowadzamy bezpośrednio z Włoch od regionalnych, rzemieślniczych producentów. W naszym menu znajdziecie m.in. szlachetną szynkę San Daniele, Mozzarellę di Bufala z mleka bawolego, sery Stracchino, Provolone i wiele innych regionalnych produktów!
To prepare every pizza at Tutti Santi, we use carefully selected products imported directly from Italy from regional, artisanal producers. Our menu features, among other things, premium San Daniele ham, buffalo milk Mozzarella di Bufala, Stracchino and Provolone cheeses, and many other regional products!

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Filed under food, Italy, language, Poland

by | 27 May 2026 · 2:34 am

Trekking Over Arctic Ice, 1881

From In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2014), Kindle pp. 245-247:

In high spirits, De Long and his men began their long march across the frozen ocean, inching toward the familiar world, or at least a place where other human beings might conceivably be found. Stretched out for miles across the ice, they resembled, said Melville, a straggle of “vagabond insects.” It was numbing, staggering work, and yet they were strangely happy—happy to be free of the confines of the ship, relieved to be moving again, eager to accept the bonds of their common struggle. They aimed for the middle of Russia and the Siberian Arctic coast, but in their minds they were heading home, to wives and mothers and girlfriends, to plump chickens and fresh garden vegetables, to soft beds and warm fires, to gossip and invention, and if not to glory, exactly, then to the cheers of an appreciative homeland.

De Long and Dunbar, equipped with field glasses and pocket prismatic compasses, clambered ahead of everyone else in the foggy distances to mark the way with black flags stuck in the ice. They called their path a “road,” but the route they staked was little more than a suggestion of lesser treachery, a devious course across ever-shifting mazes of fissures, hummocks, pressure ridges, and pools of shimmering meltwater. Which is to say, the captain and his ice pilot—whose earlier problem with snow blindness had cleared up—were merely going on their best hunches.

Keep to the road! they cried. Stay on the road! The men could only laugh at the absurdity of the word. As Danenhower put it, there was only “knee-deep snow” and “lumps of ice that would have taken a whole corps of engineers to level.” Yet they trudged on, sunburned and chapped-lipped, dressed in sour-smelling pelts, wearing slitted ice goggles, singing galley songs as they slogged over the impossible expanses of crust and rubble and sludge.

The June sun, whenever it burned through the fog, had a strange quality of penetrating intensity, as though it were training X-rays on the snow. The light revealed a dirty ice pack at times strewn with signs of life—crab claws, bear scat, mussel shells, bleached bones, goose quills, plant seeds, driftwood, ocean sponges. The gyre of the ocean and the churn of the ice had mixed everything up, old and new, animal and vegetable, into a kind of Arctic gumbo.

Dr. Ambler cared for the sick; Alexey and Aneguin tended to the dogs. But the others spent their days as draft animals, straining against their hemp ropes and canvas harnesses. They pulled more than eight tons of provisions and gear, on improvised sleds whose crosspieces had been fashioned from whiskey barrel staves and whose heavy oak runners were shod with smooth whalebone. In addition to the three battered boats, they hauled, among other things, medicine chests, ammunition, stew pots, cooking stoves, tent poles, oars, rifles, ship logs and diaries, canvas for sails, scientific instruments, the wooden dinghy, and two hundred gallons of stove alcohol.

As for food, they had inventoried, at the outset, 3,960 pounds of pemmican, 1,500 pounds of hardtack, thirty-two pounds of beef tongue, 150 pounds of Liebig’s beef extract, twelve and a half pounds of pigs’ feet, and substantial quantities of veal, ham, whiskey, brandy, chocolate, and tobacco. Every pound, every ounce, had been carefully weighed at the start, then just as carefully apportioned to the different sleds and crews so that everyone, aside from the sick, would pull an equal amount of weight.

There was far too much to haul in one trip, so they had to double back—and sometimes triple back—to bring up everything from the rear. This meant that for many of the haulers, each mile of forward progress actually represented a distance of five miles traversed. A full day of this Sisyphean business could mean twenty-five miles or more of ceaseless struggle. It would have constituted slave labor even on hard, dry ground, but this slob ice, with all its gaping holes and intervening sea-lanes, was the most trying terrain imaginable—as a landscape, said De Long, it was “terribly confused.”

The men often had to launch the boats, cross a narrow lead of water, and then hop right back out again to re-stow the boats on the sleds. Other times, they would use a large cake of floating ice as a ferry, employing grappling hooks and networks of ropes to tow it, and all their belongings, across the water to the icy shore beyond. The “road-building crew” would wield pickaxes to clear a smooth groove through encrusted ice, shave off the top of a high hummock, or fashion what De Long called a “causeway” or a “flying bridge” across emerald pools of meltwater.

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Filed under food, labor, migration, military, science, travel, U.S.

by | 26 May 2026 · 12:14 am

Demise of St. Lawrence Island, 1881

From In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2014), Kindle pp. 235-238:

One of Hooper’s responsibilities was to patrol the capes and islands of Alaska in search of rum merchants, whose illicit trade in alcohol was proving disastrous to the natives. It was in the service of that responsibility that in late June, Captain Hooper stopped at St. Lawrence Island, an ice-gouged crescent of volcanic rock set in the middle of the frigid sea, directly west of the mouth of the Yukon River. Part of America’s Alaskan territory, St. Lawrence Island was nearly a hundred miles long and some twenty miles wide. Three years earlier, the island had had a population of more than fifteen hundred Yupiks, living in a dozen well-established villages scattered along the coast. Theirs was an ancient, thriving culture built principally on the walrus hunt. But then, in a single winter, the populace had been nearly extinguished by some sort of disease or famine.

Around six o’clock on the evening of June 24, 1881, Hooper anchored the Corwin along the south coast of the island, beside a small Eskimo village. The captain, along with Muir, Smithsonian naturalist Edward Nelson, and the ship’s physician, Irving Rosse, rowed toward shore in a small boat, scanning the terrain with their field glasses. The island, said Muir, was a “cheerless-looking mass of black lava, dotted with volcanoes, covered with snow, without a single tree.” Landing the lifeboat, they strode across a gravel beach and then a spongy surface of snow-dusted lichen and moss. Here and there, blooming heaths and other bright wildflowers peeked through the snow. But when the men approached the village, there was no one to be seen. “We began to fear,” said Muir, “that not a soul was left alive.”

…

WHAT, PRECISELY, HAD happened on St. Lawrence Island? Many whalers suspected an epidemic of some kind, but others believed the mass death was caused by the complete failure of the Yupiks’ hunt in the summer and fall of 1878—which, in turn, was caused by an abundance of rum and whiskey illegally sold to the St. Lawrence Islanders by American traffickers. With alcohol around, Yupik life had ground to a halt—“as long as the rum lasts,” wrote Hooper, “they do nothing but drink and fight.” Drunkenness, said Muir, had “rendered them careless about the laying up of ordinary supplies of food for the winter.” Indeed, near one of the huts, Hooper counted eight empty whiskey casks.

Then an extremely severe winter followed, with far more ice than usual, which made it harder to find seals and whales. By early 1879, the Yupiks all over St. Lawrence Island had begun to starve. They ate their own sealskin clothing, and the walrus-skin coverings of their huts, and the walrus-skin membranes of their boats. This temporarily satisfied their cravings but made them violently ill. With nothing else left to eat, they butchered their dogs until they ran completely out of food. In twos and threes, the villagers of St. Lawrence Island began to die.

The numbers across the island were staggering: More than one thousand people—two-thirds of the population—had perished in 1879, the same year the Jeannette had set sail and cruised right past this island on her way to the pole. The conventional explanation addressed only part of the mass starvation. Alcohol and the severe winter were certainly factors—alcohol, especially. But something far larger had been taking place that made this colossal famine a certainty: Over the previous decade, American whalers in the Arctic, seeking to augment the value of their cargo, had turned to harvesting walruses in astoundingly high numbers. Throughout the 1870s, American whaling vessels had taken as many as 125,000 walruses from the Bering Strait region. The slaughter had proved to be a lucrative sideline to the whaling business. The whalers cooked the animal’s blubber into oil and hacked off the tusks to sell in ivory markets as far away as England and China. In a single season in 1876, more than 35,000 Bering walruses were killed.

Compared to the risky rigors of Arctic whaling, “walrusing” could be ridiculously easy. Rather than wielding lances and harpoons from tippy open boats, the whalers had discovered that they could simply clomp onto the ice with rifles and shoot large numbers of walruses point-blank in the head. Then the butchering, flensing, and boiling could begin. Firing up their try-pots aboard ship, the whalers could render more than twenty gallons of oil from the blubber of a single mature bull. In less than a decade, this industrially efficient slaughter had largely destroyed the Yupiks’ primary source of food and the seasonal hunting life upon which it was based. By the 1880s, the walrus was nearly extinct in large swaths of the Bering Sea.

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Filed under disease, drugs, economics, food, U.S.

by | 19 April 2026 · 1:59 am

Polish zakąski vs. Romanian zacuscă

My latest compilation from Culture.pl includes some articles about Polish gastronomy, including Natalia Mętrak-Ruda’s 2020 article on Zakąski Culture in Poland: What to Eat with Vodka?

The Spanish have their tapas, the Italians have their aperitivo and in the Middle East they feast on mezze. Small plates, which you most often share with friends and which – at least in countries where it’s generally accepted to consume alcohol – are usually accompanied by a fair share of drinks, are a part of many food cultures worldwide. In Poland, these dishes are known as zakąski and go exceptionally well with vodka.

…

Traditional Polish weddings, especially in rural areas, are occasions where the culture of zakąski still reigns supreme. While we’ve observed a cultural shift in past decades, and people in big cities tend to drink more wine and often prefer a more Mediterranean or French approach to banquet canapés, smalec [animal fat, cf. schmaltz], sausages and other cured meats, meat jellies, pickles, and herring are still among the most popular items included in traditional wedding buffets – sometimes known as wiejski stół, ‘a country table’.

… Yet the king of all zakąski was herring, served with a tomato and onion sauce (the ‘Kashubian’ way), with mayonnaise and peas (curiously named Japanese herring), or simply in oil with some onions.

In the last decade ongoing efforts have been made by some Polish chefs, bartenders and spirit connoisseurs to start looking at vodka from a new perspective. Not just as something to get drunk on, or dissolve in a cocktail, but an interesting local product, which has the potential to become as important to Poland, as whiskey is to Ireland and Scotland, or champagne to France.

To do so, passionate chefs started to think about much more refined zakąski, which would go well with artisan vodkas. Chef Aleksander Baron and food writer Łukasz Klesyk even wrote a book about it entitled Między Wódką a Zakąską (which literally means ‘Between Vodka and an Appetiser’, yet also refers to the idiom wcinać się między wódkę a zakąskę – to meddle or interfere).

The authors claim that the most important rules in creating new zakąski are following the contrasts created by the pairing of the sweetness of vodka with either salt or acid. At the same time, keeping in mind that the appetisers should be rich and complex enough to handle high levels of alcohol. It can be achieved by adding fat but also by enriching the flavours by grilling, roasting, adding herbs, spices or mushrooms.

The Russian equivalent of zakąski is zakuski, singular zakuska, with pretty much the same meaning, but the Romanian zacuscă that we Outliers are very fond of is instead a vegetable concoction of roasted eggplant, red bell pepper, onion, tomato, and spices.

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Filed under food, language, Poland, Romania

by | 16 April 2026 · 12:26 am

Polish Realia: Beer Styles

From the illustrated placemat at Browar Pivovaria, in Radom, Poland.
Najlepsze Piwa z Radomia / Warzone na Miejscu
‘Best beer from Radom / Brewed on Site’

Pils Pilsner
Nasz Pils to pełne, jasne piwo dolnej fermentacji w stylu niemieckich pilznerów. Posiada barwę złota i wspaniałą białą pianę, a warzone jest ze słodu jasnego jęczmiennego. W smaku czyste, orzeżwiające, z wraźną szlachetną goryczką i zapachem szyszek chmielowych. Polecane do zimnych przekąsek, dań z drobiu i ryb. Alk. 5% obj. [< objętościowo]
Our Pils is a full-bodied, light bottom-fermented beer in the style of German pilsners. It has a golden color and a wonderful white foam, and is brewed from light barley malt. The taste is clean, refreshing, with a slight noble bitterness and the smell of hop flowers. Recommended for cold snacks, poultry and fish dishes. Alc. 5% vol.

Pszeniczne Wheat 
Pszeniczne to orzeźwiające piwo w stylu weizen. Warzone jest ze słodu pszenicznego (60%) i jęczmiennego jasnego. Piwo to charakteryzuje się słomkową barwą i puszystą białą pianką. W smaku wyczuwa się pszenicę jak również aromat bananowo goździkowy. Poleca się szczególnie do dan serwowanych z sosem śmietanowym, delikatnej wieprzowiny i placków ziemniaczanych. Alk. 5,1% obj.
Wheat is a refreshing weizen-style beer. It is brewed from wheat malt (60%) and light barley. This beer is characterized by a straw color and fluffy white foam. The taste is wheat with banana and clove aroma. It is especially recommended for dishes served with sour cream sauce, tender pork and potato pancakes. Alc. 5.1% vol.

Bursztynowe Amber
Bursztynowe to piwo dolnej fermentacji. Produkowane jest z udziałem słodu jasnego jęczmiennego i ciemnych słodówkarmelowych. Barwa jest adekwatna do nazwy, a smak to mieszające się nuty słodowo – karmelowe oraz wyczuwalna goryczka. Poleca się je szczególnie do potraw z grilla i dań ze schabu. Alk. 5,7 obj.
Amber is a bottom-fermented beer. It is produced with light barley malt and dark caramel malts. The color lives up to its name, and the taste is mixed malt and caramel notes and noticeable bitterness. They are especially recommended for grilled dishes and pork loin dishes. Alc. 5.7 vol.

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Filed under education, food, language, Poland

by | 15 April 2026 · 1:05 am

Polish Realia: Beer Types

From the illustrated placemat at Browar Pivovaria, in Radom, Poland.
Najlepsze Piwa z Radomia / Warzone na Miejscu
‘Best beer from Radom / Brewed on Site’

Koźlak Bock
Nasz Koźlak jest mocnym, ciemnym piwem o słodkim zapachu przypominającym ciasto z owocami. Wyczuwa się również woń karmelu, fig is suszonych śliwek. Ma rozgrzewający charakter, a na podniebieniu pozostawia pełny słodowy smak z przebijającymi się nutami toffi i wyraźną goryczką. Poleca cię go m.in. [< między innymi ‘inter alia’ ] do żeberek i delikatnej wołowiny. Alk. 7,5% obj. [< objętościowo]
Our Koźlak is a strong, dark beer with a sweet smell reminiscent of fruit cake. You can also smell caramel, figs and prunes. It has a warming character, and leaves a full malty taste on the palate with pungent [not ‘punctual’!] notes of toffee and a distinct bitterness. It is recommended for ribs and tender beef, among others. Alc. 7.5% vol.

APA American Pale Ale
Piwo górnej fermentacji w stylu American Pale Ale. W smaku wyrazista, zbalansowana gorycz z wyczuwalnym aromatem chmieli Amerykańskich. Piwo polecane do pikantnych i słonych dań. Alk. 5,0% obj.
Top fermented beer in the style of American Pale Ale. The taste is distinctive, balanced bitterness with a noticeable aroma of American hops. The beer is recommended for spicy and salty dishes. Alc. 5.0% vol.

Czarny Koń (lub inne piwo sezonowe)
Black Horse (or other seasonal beer)
Mocne, ciemne piwo w stylu ALE. W smaku i aromacie wyczuwalna jest słodowa słodycz z nutami karmelu. Znaczny dodatek słodów ciemnych nadaje piwu również aromat i smak ciemnej czekolady oraz kawy. Piwo długo leżakowane. Piwo poleca się m.in. do golonek i żeberek. Alk. 9.2% obj.
Strong, dark beer in the style of ALE. In the taste and aroma, there is a malty sweetness with notes of caramel. A significant addition of dark malts also gives the beer the aroma and taste of dark chocolate and coffee. Long aged beer. The beer is recommended for pork knuckles and ribs, among others. Alc. 9.2% vol.

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Filed under education, food, language, Poland

by | 11 April 2026 · 12:31 am

Evolution of Polish Viticulture

My latest compilation of stories from Culture.pl includes an interview about the history of Polish viticulture. Here are some excerpts:

Monika Kucia: Poland isn’t historically a winemaking country, but we do have a short history of winemaking dating back centuries. When were grapes first cultivated on our territories? 

Wojciech Bońkowski: In the Middle Ages, viticulture was quite developed in our country, also because the climate in our part of Europe was warmer back then. Wine was mainly needed for religious purposes, the celebration of mass, so it was grown on a limited, very small scale. Cultivation collapsed due to the so-called Little Ice Age, a period of cooling in the North Atlantic when average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere dropped by about 1°C. Around the 17th century, Poland began importing large quantities of wine from, among other places, Hungary and Ukraine. After World War II, Lubusz Voivodeship, including Zielona Góra [‘Grünberg’], was incorporated into Poland. Before 1939, Zielona Góra was the largest wine-producing region in Germany and specialized in sparkling wines. We took over these vineyards, but they, too, were closed down by the 1960s because the Polish communist authorities promoted the production of fruit wines, not grape wines.

MK: What is fruit wine?

WB: Fruit wine is a cheap alcoholic beverage made from widely available fruit, in Poland primarily from apples. Hence the Polish term ‘jabol’ [slang term for low-quality, wine-like alcoholic fruit beverage derived from the word for ‘apple’, jabłko, trans.]. This kind of wine is much cheaper to produce than wine made from the fermentation of grape must. Fruit wine production was possible in Poland on a large scale thanks to the orchard industry. The Polish People’s Republic saw a decline in wine culture, which had been quite developed in interwar Poland, among the elite of course. The common folk, if we may use that term, drank other alcoholic beverages. This is, of course, a result of our geographical location. We have a different social situation today; changes are affecting the whole of society, and wine has definitely become very popular. Studies show that nearly 50% of Poles declare at least occasional wine consumption.

…

MK: How did it all begin?

WB: Winemaking was first revived in the Podkarpackie [‘Subcarpathian’]  region thanks to the efforts of Roman Myśliwiec [‘Hunter’], who founded a nursery where he propagated vines and supported the establishment of small vineyards and the production of wine in a style we affectionately call ‘allotment garden wine’. Some had 1,000, others 2,000 square meters of vineyard. Back then, no one had a hectare. These were amateur production attempts. 

…

MK: Where did the winemakers get their seedlings?

WB: Partly from Myśliwiec, but of course, seedlings can be easily purchased in wine-producing countries. We have Czechia and Slovakia just across the border. That’s not a problem, just a cost. And these were investors, businessmen who had money they’d made in other industries.

MK: And what about Jutrzenka in the Podkarpackie region?

WB: That was a variety created by Myśliwiec, a typical hybrid. The problem with hybrids was that most of them were of very poor quality. The early ones, such as Bianca and Sibera, were so-called second-generation hybrids that reeked of cabbage and IXI laundry powder; they had no merits.

MK: So why were they cultivated?

WB: Hybrids are developed for two purposes: either to ripen early and be suitable for a cold climate, which was their main function in Poland; or to be more disease resistant. At the time, it seemed that we in Poland couldn’t grow Chardonnay or any other viniferavariety, that the grapes wouldn’t be ripe enough to make wine. This turned out to be untrue. It gets a little warmer every year, which helps. Meanwhile, the discussion about hybrids is currently gaining momentum worldwide. On the one hand, we have the pressure of significantly reducing the use of chemicals in agriculture; after all, winemaking is responsible for a significant portion of soil contamination – in France, for example. There are stories about a winemaker spraying fifteen times, but if he’s planted a hybrid, spraying twice would be enough.

MK: So hybrids aren’t ‘inferior’?

WB: At first, I was skeptical about hybrids. Not from a cultivation perspective, as I don’t know anything about it, or at least I don’t have practical experience, but from the perspective of the market and the quality of these wines. Fourth-generation hybrids, such as Johanniter and Solaris, are varietals that are no longer easy to distinguish in a comparative tasting; they are simply very good. Johanniter and Riesling can be very similar, so the quality argument is no longer relevant.

MK: And can one grow noble red wine varietals in Poland?

WB: In Poland, for example, we have a lot of Pinot Noir; this varietal has recently produced surprisingly good wines in many places around the world, such as Czechia and Canada, which have similar climatic conditions to Poland. It used to be said that this was a difficult grape variety which only performed well in Burgundy, but that’s not true. That’s the great thing about wine – we’re constantly being self-verified. Yesterday, it seemed that only Italian wines were sexy, but today, wines from Greece and Croatia are considered sexy. It’s constantly changing.

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Filed under Canada, Czechia, food, France, Germany, Poland, religion

by | 6 April 2026 · 12:53 am

Polish Realia: Brewery Operating Steps

On the occasion of Śmigus-Dyngus:
From the illustrated placemat at Browar Pivovaria, in Radom, Poland.
Najlepsze Piwa z Radomia / Warzone na Miejscu
‘Best beer from Radom / Brewed on Site’

Słód ‘malt’
Mielenie Słodu / śrutownik ‘grinding the malt’ / ‘grinder’
Zacieranie / kadż zaciera + woda ‘rubbing / mash tun + water’
Filtracja / kadż filtracyjna ‘filtration / filtration vat’
Gotowanie / kocioł warzelny + chmiel ‘cooking / boiling kettle + hops’
Schładzanie Brzeczki / wymiennik ciepła ‘cooling the wort / heat exchanger’
Fermentacja / tank fermentacyjny + drożdże ‘fermentation / fermentation tank + yeast’
Leżakowanie / tank leżakowy ‘aging / aging tanks’
Butelka ‘bottle’ or Keg ‘keg’

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by | 31 March 2026 · 12:32 am

Food Rationing in Scotland, 1945

From Wojtek the Bear: Polish War Hero, by Aileen Orr (Birlinn, 2014), Kindle pp. 61-62:

In Scotland the food allowance each person had to get by on at that time included the following: 2 ounces of bacon or ham, a finger of cheese (1.5 ounces), 7 ounces of butter or margarine, 2 ounces of cooking fats, 8 ounces of sugar, 2 ounces of tea (about 20 teabags), 4 ounces of sweets and 1 shilling’s-worth (5p) of meat. It doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Except this wasn’t a day’s ration – it was for one full week. Except for the bacon. That was two weeks’ allowance. Other staples such as bread, bananas and even potatoes (throughout 1947) were also rationed. As for fresh eggs, you could have one a fortnight – if you could lay your hands on one. Most urban families made do with the vile-tasting powdered version for the skimpy amounts of baking they could eke out of their precious rations of flour and sugar. On the plus side, people were allowed three pints of milk a week.

In fact, milk was just about the only commodity with which the Attlee government was generous; as part of its drive to maintain the nutritional health of the country’s children, in 1946 free school milk was introduced for all pupils up to the age of 18. This was later reduced to primary schools only. A quarter of a century later, free school milk was finally phased out by Margaret Thatcher. She was dubbed Thatcher the Milk Snatcher by her political opponents.

Those of us of a certain age well remember the crates of one-third-of-a-pint bottles which had to be humped in from the playground into the classrooms. For some unfathomable reason, once indoors, the crates always seemed to be stacked next to the school radiators, ensuring the milk was lukewarm by the time it was dispensed. It is one of life’s ironies that, despite food shortages and rationing, the children of postwar Scotland were better fed than many of their modern counterparts. That, in large part, was down to the free milk ration and free school meals (about half the UK’s pupils qualified for them), plus daily doses of free cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice which mothers determinedly rammed down the throats of protesting offspring.

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Filed under Britain, economics, education, food