2015-02-27: Cooking Confusion pt II

After the gym I picked up cooking supplies. In Australia Friday was always Fry-Day and I would make chicken wings or chips or deep fried Camembert. This was a long acknowledged reason for our relationship working so well and became an atheistic religious ritual.

I never learned to crumb anything very well.

My Polish teacher translated the pun of Fry-Day to Smaż-ątek. Friday is Piątek in Polish so it works if you know the original pun.

This Tea Towel pattern is one I have worked with in various bars and restaurants over the years. None have been double length like this though. These are great. Hypothetically if I was using one to snap someone on the butt I could be miles away and they would have no counter attack!

Ewa's Dad is not aware of the original pun and has his own tradition which is "no meat on Friday". This is because he is "not communist" more than he is "not catholic". The communists didn't like the catholics therefore he does the catholic thing.


I had already seen this logic apply (for Christmas) and so was not as confused as he was when presented with deep fried cheese with plum sauce beside lettuce and chipotle dressing and I explained it was for Smaż-ątek.

100 Jars but a dressing ain't one

When I say Chipotle dressing I mean the Paul Newman Southern Ranch dressing. Except they don't have that here. The Supermarket I found which had a deep fryer (but no peanut oil! I had to use sunflower) didn't have any salad dressings at all. I thought I did an okay version: 2 Mayo, 1 Sour Cream, splash of vinegar, half a bottle of Tabasco and enough lemon juice to leave it still quite sour (as I expected the plum sauce to be much sweeter than what Ewa is used to).

The lettuce is equally compact and heavy as cabbages. This is throwing a lot of my vege buying instincts out the window

Ewa's mum went mental for the spicy dressing and even asked how to make it. Given the previous distrust of spicy food I am going to claim that the way to trick Poles into eating chilli's is to combine them with sour.

Happy Ladies. Ewa has been known to knife fight for the cheese so it was good for family harmony that her mum preferred the lettuce

Ewa was confused by being homesick whilst actually at home. Her Dad was confused by silly puns and traditions that aren't traditional, her Mum was confused by loving chilli's and I was confused because, well, it's me.

I will call this a win as I brought everyone down to my level.

As part of my plan to alleviate boredom by doing boring things with professional boring people I took some paperwork in to be translated today. I left Ewa at a cafe but fortified myself with a vodka and a beer first. Across the way was a clothes shop and we discussed Polish purchasing preferences for clothes. When the EU first opened up Poland was flooded with cheap chinese clothing. It was crap and quickly everyone went back to buying Polish made or, better yet, buying English shops chinese made clothes which were cheaper and better quality.

This was the clothes shop. We did not discuss my initial thought regarding "tally-whackers whacking well".

I made the guess that the Poles trying to offshore manufacture didn't speak English natively so had a double language problem and also didn't have the experience of how to negotiate with Chinese manufacturers as I have seen a documentary about how hard it is to get that set up correctly and to both sides agreement. If I am correct it means there is probably a lucrative position for any native bilingual Chinese / Poles. I haven't seen many non-euro types around here though so maybe they are few and far between.

Bound Polish Feet. If no one else will do the chinese / polish combo I'll get it rolling.

I am getting better at making my ski hat into a sock that goes over a cast. Unfortunately when we go to Japan and there are (in my mind) rope tying classes galore Ewa will have her cast off and there won't be a legitimate excuse for it any more.

My Visa translations will take a week. These aren't even government people and they are beating me at being boring. I probably will get a visa in a year or two. In the meantime there was more vodka.