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Ever had something you did to be polite come back up to haunt you?
When I was in high school I had a really cool next door neighbor. She was a chemistry professor at a local college and had fled communist Poland right after finishing her university degree. She was an extremely interesting person and also a fantastic cook. She became my mom's best friend. I spent hours in her kitchen listening to her tell stories and learning to make strucla orzechami (nut roll), makowiec (poppy seed roll), kolaczki (jam cookies), khruchiki (angel wing cookies), meat stuffed potato pancakes and perogies.
One Christmas Eve she invited us over for a traditional Christmas eve dinner. I was really excited, especially since I had helped make the sauerkraut and mushroom perogies waiting in her freezer for the night. What I had missed in all the years in her kitchen was the important role of pickled herring in Polish cuisine.
In the course of this huge meal, featuring 12 dishes, a dish of pickled herring mixed with chopped tart apple, onion, and dill pickle in a sour cream dish was placed in front of me. I like most fish, unless it has experienced pickling and/or canning. I loathe pickled herring, the canned sardines my father ate ever Saturday lunch on rye crackers, canned salmon, anchovies, pretty much the lot except canned tuna in water. However, I was a guest. I was polite and ate it -- all of it.
For the past two weeks my mother has been making a big deal about a package she send me for Easter. It was a heavy, medium fixed rate box. I was told not to open it until Easter Sunday. She kept dropping hints about how I would enjoy the contents and how I would have a special snack to eat every day after Easter.
I'm sure you all have connected the dots at this point. I, however, had forgotten that pickled herring salad, consumed during the Carter administration. With enough apparent enthusiasm that it was indelibly burned into my mother's memory. So, I was taken completely by surprise when I opened a box of six carefully wrapped tins of sardines in olive oil, a packet of anchovies and a jar of pickled herring in cream sauce.
WD may have had the Easter bunny. I seem to have had the Easter dolphin.
When I was in high school I had a really cool next door neighbor. She was a chemistry professor at a local college and had fled communist Poland right after finishing her university degree. She was an extremely interesting person and also a fantastic cook. She became my mom's best friend. I spent hours in her kitchen listening to her tell stories and learning to make strucla orzechami (nut roll), makowiec (poppy seed roll), kolaczki (jam cookies), khruchiki (angel wing cookies), meat stuffed potato pancakes and perogies.
One Christmas Eve she invited us over for a traditional Christmas eve dinner. I was really excited, especially since I had helped make the sauerkraut and mushroom perogies waiting in her freezer for the night. What I had missed in all the years in her kitchen was the important role of pickled herring in Polish cuisine.
In the course of this huge meal, featuring 12 dishes, a dish of pickled herring mixed with chopped tart apple, onion, and dill pickle in a sour cream dish was placed in front of me. I like most fish, unless it has experienced pickling and/or canning. I loathe pickled herring, the canned sardines my father ate ever Saturday lunch on rye crackers, canned salmon, anchovies, pretty much the lot except canned tuna in water. However, I was a guest. I was polite and ate it -- all of it.
For the past two weeks my mother has been making a big deal about a package she send me for Easter. It was a heavy, medium fixed rate box. I was told not to open it until Easter Sunday. She kept dropping hints about how I would enjoy the contents and how I would have a special snack to eat every day after Easter.
I'm sure you all have connected the dots at this point. I, however, had forgotten that pickled herring salad, consumed during the Carter administration. With enough apparent enthusiasm that it was indelibly burned into my mother's memory. So, I was taken completely by surprise when I opened a box of six carefully wrapped tins of sardines in olive oil, a packet of anchovies and a jar of pickled herring in cream sauce.
WD may have had the Easter bunny. I seem to have had the Easter dolphin.
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