that special thing....

This post was meant to go up ages ago but I'm all messed up with this boot camp for writers and trying to set reasonable goals, and making lists.

Last night for example, I made various lists for today. I like to include relatively easy things on my list as morale boosters, so one of the items was "get up". The second thing on my list was "shower and shave". And that's where things went wrong. One of the numerous negative items about no longer living in our old building, is that we no longer have a swimming pool, and since it's not quite beach weather in Vancouver right now, I stopped worrying about body hair on Nov 26. But I'm taking the kids swimming today at my mom's pool, hence the reminder to deal with that. Unfortunately, as the note was not waterproof, I did not carry it with me into the shower & post it in a prominent place & hence I forgot to do the shaving part & didn't remember until I was getting dressed. At which point I froze with indecision because I really did need to do this, but another negative about living here is no unlimited hot water. Yes, I tell you, I'm really slumming it here; we actually have a hot water tank & if I went back in the shower to deal with the body hair, the likelihood was that it would be done in cold water and that was just too much to cope with.....

The list thing kind of went downhill from there.

I have been hearing for years that people are jaded with turkey and that the new Christmas trends are pheasant or lobster or exotic and expensive wild game. The problem with the affluent lifestyle most of us enjoy is that turkey is not that rare. Neither are the sweets, or the cakes or even the presents - most people 'get' something throughout the year anyway.

So it's really rare to find families who have something at Christmas that they absolutely do not have at any other time. But we do. We have this cold pudding-like dish made of cubed french bread, soaked with milk, sugar and ground (and properly prepared*) poppy seeds. It's not a typically Polish dish - more a regional thing. Some Poles haven't heard of it, and some put raisins in theirs. I'm scared to even write that because it's just so wrong. We met one family who put raisins in theirs & the families no longer speak to each other. There may have been other reasons, but I think the raisins played an important part.

Anyway. This is served only during Christmas. First batch on Christmas Eve, last batch on my birthday on January 3rd.

This lovely dish is called makielki and neither Roo nor the children will come anywhere near it. They pronounce it mucky yucky & that pretty much explains their feelings for it.

Which goes rather a long way to explaining why we only have it once a year. The key, you see, to keeping these dishes rare is that they have to be weird, bizarre, or downright awful (the Norwegian lutefisk comes to mind). Makielki's redeeming feature is that they're sweet. And they drug you. I sleep like a baby after a couple servings - all those poppy seeds make for a relaxed and mellow Christmas.

*you need ground poppy seeds, like for a poppy seed struedel. Usually you can get these at European bakeries or delis. You need to pour hot water over them, & drain off the milky liquid several times. Apparently, ages ago, during harvest time, children and babies were given this liquid as it put them to sleep and kept them out of mischief while the farming families worked. Don't think I haven't been tempted but the worry about dosages and the fear that I'd put my kids to sleep for a week has kept temptation at bay.