Kwasnica & Co.

   Our Polish adventures are slowly coming to an end, so there is only few more opportunities to share some of my Mom's cooking with you. The weather so far was great but you can definitely tell winter is coming. As a matter of fact, there is already snow in the Polish mountains in the south.
   Speaking of mountains, today for dinner we had a traditional mountain region sour soup called "kwasnica". Oh it's sour, that's for sure, but delicious. There are only two main ingredients: sauerkraut and pork ribs, but what else you really need? Those two make me plenty happy! I was curious if Justin will like it since it's very taste specific and very "different" from what I cook, but my worries were unnecessary because he finished his plate way before any of us. This soup was the perfect choice for today's cold winter-like weather, it really warmed us up, and the ribs didn't hurt either!

   We decided that after this rich soup we should have something a little bit lighter as a second course, so my Mom made us pasta with spinach... well after we ate a mountain of it there was nothing light about it any more. Justin couldn't believe how different, and better, Polish pasta is. It has completely different taste and texture and seems much lighter (seems!!!) and when you pair it with healthy spinach it's like eating negative calories!!! I know, I know... I'm in my own dream world, but somehow I need to convince myself I didn't eat too much. Just look at it, does it look fattening to you?

   Well, maybe a little, but it's too late now. Since we ate such a "healthy" dinner we couldn't end it with anything else other than some fruit... and, as we all know fruits taste the best with some sugar and dough :). This time I decided to take care of the dessert and I made one of my signature desserts: szarlotka (Polish apple pie, which Justin keeps calling "skarpetka", which means "a sock"!). I used my old recipe, which I always use and I was really surprised that the cake was completaly different than at home. I don't know if it's a different flour, butter or just the Polish air but it came out a little bit better than usual. Nobody complained about it and half of it is already gone so I think I did pretty good job!

Piece of szarlotka, glass of milk, a good movie and here you have the best cold Saturday night ever!

Hope you enjoy your weekend as well.
Magda.