happy paczki day

It's Fat Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras. In the Reluctant household, we celebrate the Polish version -- Paczki Day. Paczki, pronounced basically /POONCH-key/, are jam-filled donuts with a fine crumb and a rich taste. Paczki Day is celebrated mostly in the Polish-American enclaves of the Midwest, although we did manage to score a great box of genyooine paczki at the Big Y in Mansfield, CT, one fine year. This article provides history and some recipes, which are probably better than the one in my first Polish cookbook, which yielded what could only be called paczki crepes.

I grew up in the Detroit suburbs, but didn't really celebrate Paczki Day until high school, when I began with the zeal of a born-again paczki-thumper and haven't stopped since. My great-grandparents came to Michigan and raised their children in Hamtramck, like many Polish families around the turn of the twentieth century, forming a community that still spoke Polish at home and kept Polish traditions alive in schools, shops and churches. Take a virtual tour here. By the time I came around, the families had long since moved into the suburbs and Hamtramck was in decline, as was much of Detroit. My exposure to Polish-ness was a few phrases and songs and my grandma's cooking. Mmmm...Easter soup, kielbasa, city chicken, Polish rye bread, fresh horseradish. And it was the message to stay away from Detroit because it was dangerous.

Still, I get an ancestral pang when I see images of Detroit. It's not really nostalgia; it's anger at the destruction of poverty and the ravages of time and the ache of being unwanted and misused. It's horror at the wasteland of a once-vibrant midwestern city, and worse yet, one that bred my people and gave them a safe place to land when they began their American journey. It's the loss of one particular community at one place and one time. It's hopes that were scattered far beyond the streets of Hamtramck, falling into the crevices and furrows of other neighborhoods and other cities. It's my America.

So here I am. I read the New York Times and live in Oregon and sit in California chairs and Japanese cars and celebrate Passover with the zeal of a born-again brisket-thumper. And I encourage everyone, therefore, to reach into that bakery box for another paczki, because some things in life are worth tradition.

Image courtesy of a 2007 Paczki Day graphic at the Hamtramck Star, a blog about the Hamtramck area of Detroit, which seems to be undergoing revitalization as a hip place to live. Cool.