Our Easter Tradition

Kielbasa. That's our Easter tradition. In the old days, when we lived in Ohio near family, we spent Easter with Bob's family. Eileen always served the same: for breakfast, she cooked a huge pan of kielbasa, some hardboiled eggs, and served lamb-shaped, coconut-covered coffee cake from the neighborhood bakery, Menke's. (With much effort I tracked down a lamb shaped pan here a few years ago to duplicate this part of the tradition, but everyone said it looked like a cat and wouldn't eat it.)

When I say "neighborhood" bakery, I mean it literally was located just a few blocks from my mother-in-law's home on a residential street. This area was known amongst the early Polish settlers in Toledo as "Lagrinka" -- I don't know whether that name has a Polish translation, but I supposed it to be their version of Lagrange Street. Bob's people came from "Russia Poland" in the early 1900's and settled in that neighborhood amongst hundreds of other immigrants of similar background. Some of these first generation Americans learned very little English, and wrapped themselves in the culture transplanted from their homeland into this new place. Menke's was not the only neighborhood business. Directly across the street from 3 West Park where the Wojnarowski's (Bob's family: we've changed our name, but that's another story for another day) lived was a neighborhood market or corner store. There was no parking lot, as their customers all lived within walking distance. Neighborhood bars were also very common.

The other neighborhood markets of importance were Mary's, and later Stanley's, several blocks away, across Lagrange Street. These little stores were the keepers of the secret recipes for the very best kielbasa ever to be made. Mary's went out of business possibly in the 1980's or early 90's, but Stanley's is still going strong. Especially at Easter and other holidays. Stanley may take orders, but during Holy Week the place is packed with people at the meat counter in the back of the store taking numbers and standing in line for their turn, sometimes for quite a while, to get the most important ingredient for their traditional Easter feast. I can't even imagine how much kielbasa Stanley and his people must make that week, but it is all fresh, not frozen or smoked, and it is purchased in large quantities by most of the customers.

Kielbasa. What we find in stores here labeled as kielbasa is not the real thing. It doesn't look like kielbasa, doesn't smell like kielbasa, and it doesn't even come close to tasting like kielbasa. And I'm sure it's not made by Polish people, which is the most important ingredient in the secret recipe. I'm sure that scrawled in pencil on that yellowed paper somewhere it says, "must be made by Polish hands".

Passing down traditions, especially dietary traditions, is not easy when you live in an entirely different cultural area than you grew up in. Back in the "old days" the early Polish immigrants must have brought their recipes with them from the old country, bought the necessary ingredients from nearby farms or their little neighborhood markets, and stuffed their own sausage. When we lived in San Francisco, I tried that. It didn't work. For one thing, Mary wouldn't give me her recipe. For another, stuffing sausage is not as easy as it sounds. Some years that we have traveled to Ohio in the summer or fall, we have made the pilgrimage to Stanley's in all reverence, and stocked up on our year's supply of kielbasa. But the truth is, it just isn't the same after it's been frozen for 6 months.

So, last year I called Stanley's and asked if they ship kielbasa. No. Unfortunately, shipping perishables is more than they wanted to deal with. So I called anyone I could find on the internet in the Hamtramack, Michigan, area that might ship kielbasa. Hamtramack is between Toledo and Detroit and was known for its very high Polish population -- 90% in 1970, but down to 22% in 2000. I thought surely someone there would ship kielbasa to Utah. Well, yes, if I wanted to pay something like $35 shipping, not including the cost of the sausage. I was desperate, but not quite that desperate yet.

to be continued...