With the in-laws coming down to celebrate Easter with us, I thought I would order some nice Ukrainian/Polish treats for our Easter supper. Of course, I'm going to throw in some Southern dishes too.
I have been on Polana's mailing list for years and years. They sell fresh sausages that you obviously can't get in Nashville--that I know of anyway. Every year, I say I'm going to order from them and every year, we either go to NY for Easter or I just forget until it's always too late. I was on the ball this year, barely.
Grandpa grew up shopping at Kurowycky's in the Lower East side of Manhattan. It's an old traditional butcher that sells all the wonderful Ukrainian specialties including kobassa (or kielbasa) and kiszka (a casing stuffed with pork and either kasha (dark kiszka) or rice (light or white kiszka). It's also known as blood sausage, but we normally don't mention that around the kids. hehe. Martha made it famous in her first (or second--I forgot which) edition of LIVING magazine in the late 80s. I've only been in there once with the hub stocking up on items to bring home to DC (when it was still hard to find items there unless you went to the Shrine). One family member is chosen each Ukrainian Christmas and Ukrainian Easter (both fall on different days than traditional Christmas and Easter) to go to Kurowycky's and pick up all the kobassa and kiszkas for the celbebratory dinners. It's always a wonderful fattening feast to enjoy.
I placed my order on Sunday and hope to have all my goodies by Friday. I ordered fresh kobassa (they didn't have smoked), skinny kobassa, holubchi (cabbage stuffed with rice and pork), and dark kiszka. I'll pick up my pyrohy (potato and cheese dumplings) locally.
Grammy is going to teach me how to make the family's Paska, the traditional Ukrainian Easter bread. This is Grandpa's mother's recipe as best Grammy could come up with. Apparently, the recipe was never written down, which is usually the case with these old traditional foods. If you're interested check out Granny Anny's blog for the Paska recipe. I've used my bread machine a couple of times with a recipe from an old Ukrainian cookbook. But I do look forward to learning the traditional family's recipe. If you're interested in reading more about our Ukrainian traditions, and you missed it the first time around, you can read my previous post on Pysanky.
In other news, the teenager finally got a call back from Walgreen's where he interviewed for a part-time job over four weeks ago! They had first told him they were looking for older people who could work longer hours. The call today said they had an opening for just a few days a week which is absolutely perfect for a high school student. He has to go in tomorrow and have a drug test and fill out some paperwork. This will be a great opportunity to get his first job under his belt. Yea!! Don't know what this means for summer vacation though. Oh well, I'll jump that hurdle when I get to it!!
With the hub back in town (yea!), I do have to go and make dinner (boo). So with that, I'm off clanking those pots and pans!
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