On Meals, Wheels, and Indoor Entertainment

The subject that seems to be of unequivocal interest to my friends and family is "Jordan's food ingestion," a subject that, until now, has not been thoroughly discussed in a blog entry. Unfortunately, my eating habits are not particularly adventurous. Each of my meals consists of one of the following: salad, yogurt, eggs, cheese, pickles, fruit, bread. Sometimes I buy frozen pierogis (the kind with ricotta cheese, not with cabbage & mushrooms) and dress them up with honey or salt or sour cream. And when I feel like pampering myself, I buy a package of smoked salmon which gets devoured in less than 24 hours. Regardless of her dietary restrictions, my vegan flatmate eats far more exotically than me. She makes lemongrass-seasoned vegetable stir fry with whole wheat couscous, sesame-marinated beets with steamed bok choy, gazpacho, pesto, spinach-garlic puree, vegan chocolate cake, and lentil-walnut paste. She also grinds up her own peanut butter and hummus since neither product is particularly accessible in Poland. Sometimes I go out to eat but only on rare occasions when a special person treats me to an extravagant Thai dinner or a fancy Mexican lunch. Sometimes I get invited over for homemade carrot-apple-ginger soup, pumpkin pie, yogurt smoothies, and ginger beer. One time I ate kebab in an underground "tunnel" and concluded that it would have tasted much better had I been alcoholically or herbally enhanced. One time a wildly eccentric middle-aged American ex-pat took pity on me and gave me an H&H bagel in a zip-lock baggie as a culinary "gift" ...

"It's been in my freezer for, like, six years! But, I mean, I thought you'd appreciate it anyway! You do like bagels, right?"
"Sure. Thanks. That's, um, very thoughtful of you..."

I've always wanted to have a six-year-old freezer-burnt H&H bagel for breakfast. Haven't you?

And then, of course, there are my weekly dinners with Renee, my 90-year-old friend. She usually makes broiled chicken or tuna salad with soggy peas and potatoes. But last week when I arrived at her home she explained that she'd cooked "something special" for me, a "real treat."

"Really?" I asked, "What did you cook?"
"Cow liver!" exclaimed Renee.

Occasions such as these make me wish I had more of the carnivorous Rachel Isaacs in me, the relentless non-discriminatory Butch Woman hunger for nearly every Divinely Inspired creature under the sun. And yet I actually *did* eat the cow liver; not all of it, but enough to convince Renee that I found the treat to be "quite tasty." One must always be at the mercy of her table manners.

As for traditional Polish food (sorry if this is old news for some of you), the only delicacies that strike my fancy are borszt (beet soup), nalisniki (crepes), pierogis and szarlotka (an apple strudel-ish dessert). I do, however, adore the Polish outdoor markets. They stay open all year round and have some of the most delicious produce I've ever tasted (not to mention gorgeous colorful arrangements of reds, greens, purples, and yellows – all *natural*). Last week I bought Asian pears and a persimmon for about 50 cents.

* * *

One of the more meaningful and unpredictable aspects of my job is my meals-on-wheels adventures (or in many cases, it's medication-on-wheels). When the Welfare Commission social workers are either out of town or unavailable, I assume the responsibility of delivering food and medication to welfare clients in Warsaw. I obtain the clients' addresses (sometimes with great difficulty) and then, with my little map in hand, march across the city to deliver the goods. I usually have no trouble finding the street but locating the exact address and figuring out how to enter the building is more trying than one would expect. Addresses in Poland are not what I'd characterize as logical. On a given street, the number 92/35 might very well be followed by number 47/51. Last week, when trying to locate 24/82B, I successfully located 82A and 82C. Naturally, 82B was not sandwiched between its two A and C counterparts. It was situated elsewhere. Once I finally managed to locate B, I then needed to locate flat number 79 which required me to circle the building five times and approach six different entrances (yes, *six*) before I found the door that read "24/82B: 61-84." I finally buzzed number 79 and was greeted warmly by a little old woman in a housecoat who thanked me for bringing medication to her ailing husband and promptly invited me in for tea. She acknowledged that "ten adres jest bardzo trudne!" – yes, this address is very difficult. Since I was already drinking coffee out of my Tanner Conference mug, I passed up the opportunity for tea and engaged in a brief conversation. The woman's husband (who was resting in bed) inquired about my mug so I earnestly tried to describe the Wellesley College Tanner Conference in Polish. My description must have sounded something like this:

"students women of american university call itself 'wellesley' talk projects interesting in cities different in world. projects nice. very."

* * *

Now that it gets dark in the middle of the afternoon and the color of the sky is rarely anything other than GRAY, I've resigned myself to indoor entertainment. I recently joined a "Health Academy" where I have the luxury of running in place while watching Kelly Clarkson music videos, Polish soap operas, German reality TV (which might as well be marketed as an info-mercial for sexism), the "Strong Man" competition, and women's handball tournaments (yesterday I watched Norway play Russia in the quarter-final). Occasionally, someone flips the channel to BBC News but that only lasts for about ten seconds before the chick on the elliptical machine insists that we find out if Martina will choose Reinhard as her German Prince.

When I'm not at work or having meals-on-wheels adventures or running in place in the "Health Academy," I'm either contemplating the trials and tribulations of love, talking about myself in third-person (so says my flatmate), reading a book (slowly), doing laundry, snuggling, playing Othello, or sipping cheap Bulgarian wine in the bathtub while humming Hebrew songs and meditating on candles.

So there you have it. A glimmer of Jordan's dietary/recreational life in Poland (void of the usual Jewish-existential-spiritual musings).