Discovering Poland - January's International Family Night Out

This month’s Yum Box country was Poland.

We headed out to Minneapolis to dine at Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company in Minneapolis. They have a bakery, market, and restaurant, and sell their food wholesale. Eastern Europe Food so it represented food from Poland as well.

Wasyl and Anna Kramarczuk founded the business in 1954 after coming here from Ukraine in the 1940s. Wasyl’s skill was sausage making, Anna’s skills were cooking and baking. Their son, Orest, joined the business in 1979 and is now the primary owner. Everything they serve is made by hand from scratch. Whenever possible the ingredients are sourced locally. They won a James Beard America’s Classic Award in 2013 and is considered a Minneapolis Landmark.

We ordered different items and shared. Charlotte went with a hot dog and Caelb with a Bratwurst as their primary food. I tasted everything except Jeremy’s Polish Kielbasa and the mashed potatoes. Here is a run down on what we ordered and all shared:

Borshch, broth-based stew of beef, pork, cabbage, carrots, and beets. (Joe ordered this and gave me a taste – not sure if Jeremy and Megan tasted it).

Cabbage Roll made with pork, beef, and rice rolled in cabbage leaves and baked. Sauce was mushroom cream.

Ukrainian Meatball, a blend of beef, pork, and veal with mushroom cream sauce on egg noodles.

Cabbage roll in the foreground meatball in the background.

Also, Jeremy got the same meatball only with mashed potatoes.

Chicken Paprikash, seared chicken thigh stewed in paprika cream sauce served over spaetzle.

Chicken Paprikash

Potato Cheese Pierogi, Meat Pierogi, and Sauerkraut Pierogi (see photo below).

Polish Kielbasa 

We had PLENTY of food. Leftovers came home.

No meal is complete without trying desserts!

Maple Cream Puff, Cannoli, Vatrushka Cherry (cheesecake),

Chocolate Royale Cake, and Baklava (in the front)

Yes, there were also dessert leftovers!

When we got home, we held our snack box from yum taste tests. See results below on the Yum Scorecard. Our favorite Yum was unanimously the Gustosa, a lemon cookie. The worst yum we agreed was the paprika peanuts. They were bland. The weirdest yum was a marzipan coated chocolate bar.

Downtown Minneapolis is beautiful at night. Heading home, while stopped at a red light I caught a photo of one of the skyways that connect many of the buildings throughout the city. 

The festive decoration made me feel like an excited kid at Christmas. According to https://www.minneapolis.org/map-transportation/minneapolis-skyway-guide/ the Minneapolis skyway system is the largest contiguous system of enclosed, second-level bridges in the world – composed of 9.5 miles of pathways connecting 80 city blocks. You can read up on the history and other fun facts at the link above.

Earlier today Joe and I did errands and out weekly grocery shopping. Joe started the morning with his blood donation to the Red Cross at a Lutheran church in Plymouth, then off to Costco, Hy-Vee, and home to put away groceries. Then we made a trip to Buffalo to pick up Joe’s sunglasses at the eye clinic, dropped into Cub for one item on our grocery list that we could not get at Costco or Hy-Vee, and then had the car washed.

My joyful moment was on the drive in to the restaurant tonight when we did the Trivia Contest on Poland. Charlotte won!! She answered four of the ten questions correctly. She told us she guessed all her answers. Did you know in Poland it is a tradition at Easter for boys to throw water on girls? The girls can give the boys eggs as a bribe to keep them from throwing the water at them. The booklet told us that girls will also opt to throw water on the boys in retaliation. They sure know how to have fun in Poland!