3. Turkish Tuesday

On Tuesday I met my younger nephew Kamil at school when his classes were over, and we walked around the town, which is one of our traditions. We stopped at the stationery/craft store (yay!), exchanged some American funds into Polish zlotys at the KANTOR, and then had a meal at a Turkish place. There aren’t too many ethnic restaurants in my town (this may actually be the only one), and one would not really call it a real restaurant either; it’s more like a fast food place.

It was a slightly illegal action, since my Mom has the attitude of “why would you go to a restaurant, if you can have such good meals at home”, and my family indeed does not eat out, unless they are traveling. My Mom’s cooking is truly delicious, but… she doesn’t make kebab, the Turkish dish which I’ve read about because it seems to be a very popular dish in Poland. So I wanted to check it out.

A side note on the Polish cuisine: it’s a little odd that the most traditional Polish dishes are called Ukrainian barshtch (beetroot soup), Hungarian gulash, Russian pierogis, herring the Japanese way, carp the Jewish way, Wiener schnitzel… well, you get the point. When the cultures mingled, so did the recipes. I wonder where the hunters’ stew (bigos) came from since there is no country-related adjective attached to it; maybe the Poles actually invented this one? It’s a dish made of cabbage, meat, sausage, mushrooms and spices, and is extremely time-consuming, but readily available in many Polish restaurants.

Anyway, the kebab thingie tasted great, and my nephew ordered 200 grams of French fries. I forgot that 200 grams of fries is actually a huge mound of them fried taters, which I shouldn’t have allowed him to eat… but oh well. Aunt from America scored points big time.

Kebab – bread, salad, tzatziki sauce, fire-roasted meat. Yay for photographing food in really bad restaurant light.

The final stage of our traditional walk is visiting the button store. The ladies there are probably glad that we show up only once a year… We first ask for the odds-and-ends jar (4 cents per button or so) and after we make our selection, Kamil also chooses a dozen of regular buttons, which one of the ladies brings very patiently one by one from the Wall of Button Boxes.

I also have to mention an architectural curiosity - The Room on the Stick. Every year I walk by to see if it’s still standing (or hanging?). I can’t imagine that someone actually got a permit for this structure, or that an inspector ever saw it… and I would be scared to sit inside this room!