Today, on the Holy Saturday while having my morning coffee, I was thinking about what to eat before I go out to enjoy the Easter holiday with my family. Today evening, and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow I will spend dining with my family. Yes, it is dining. In Poland, it is a tradition to spend Easter (and Christmas) dining with the family. With years we have learned not to take as much food as in previous years and spent at least part of the day on doing other things. The best solution is to go outside to take a walk or even run a bit to burn all those calories we take eating our traditional meals.

While traveling, I usually try to enjoy as much of the local food as I can, and in a daily routine, I prefer lighter meals than our traditional ones in a spur of the moment I decided to make my morning as conventional as possible. I boiled eggs, left them to cool a bit, and quickly went to the shopkeeper just around the corner (they will close around 2-3 pm for two and a half days). I bought fresh rye bread, a sour rye concentrate, and white sausages. The next step was to boil water, put in the concentrate, and cut sausages. I left it all for a couple of minutes to boil. The eggs I added already as my soup was in the bowl. To finish, I needed some pepper and parsley. My Easter soup, called żurek was ready after 10-15 minutes. (It would, of course, take longer if I had to make the concentrate myself.)

Żurek (sour rye soup) belongs to ABC of Polish traditional kitchen and to my knowledge it is a typical Easter holiday meal. If you are in Poland and want to try local food this one is on the must-try list together with bigos (cabbage stew >>>), pierogi (dumplings >>>), schabowy (pork chop) and flaczki (chitlings). (The latter would not be however touched by many of my international colleagues.) The traditional additions are besides bread and potatoes in a different form, buckwheat, barley, and millet.

My photo is a bit staged. I added some other requisites. First, these are a small glass and a bottle of (bison grass) vodka. I skipped drinking it today, but if I had to choose an alcoholic drink that goes best with żurek, this would be vodka. (Instead, I took the orange juice, but it was against any tradition). The other essential requisite is tea pottery. Poland is a country with a really high consumption of tea. There are no unique traditions around it, like around afternoon tea in England. Black tea is simply taken by many as the main drink accompanying almost all meals.