A Taste of Memory: Journeying Through Kraków and My Mother's Kitchen
Gołąbki, Kuchnia Domowa Sasiedzi, Kraków, Poland
Krakòw Old Town
Kraków surprises me. I grew up in a Polish section of the suburbs of Buffalo and was raised by my adopted parents. My mother, Maxine, was Polish, and my father was German. There weren’t many references to their heritages growing up. My mother spoke a little bit of Polish to her sisters when they didn’t wanted us kids to know what they were talking about. And there were coffee klatches with my aunts and cousins because we had relatives who lived upstairs in the duplex we shared. Maxine was an excellent cook, but she primarily cooked meat and potatoes to satisfy my father’s German upbringing and narrow palate of favorite foods. Her specialty though was an Italian spaghetti sauce she had perfected despite not having a drop of Italian blood running through her body. I could count on two fingers the number of Polish foods she prepared: cabbage rolls (called Gołąbki) and Polish sausage. The only time we ever ate rice was when it was stuffed inside the cabbage rolls or when I was a teenager eating Chinese food at the food court inside the neighborhood mall. In fact, I more closely identified with the Italian blood of my birth parents. Although I didn’t know anything of consequence about them, Italy sounded like a more exotic country.
So I don’t expect to feel such a strong emotional connection to my mother when I arrive in Poland for the first time. She passed away 28 years ago when she was 56 years young, and I still had my whole life ahead of me. My mother was wise, a good listener, and loved to laugh. She went through multiple bouts of cancer but somehow stayed strong through all of it. She had dozens of VHS tapes that she watched all the time with comedies on them. She knew laughter was the best medicine, and her videotape stash was legendary.
My mother and father, Maxine and Walter in my childhood kitchen
If you’d like to check out our full video on the tastes of Kraków, head over to our episode, Polish Food Tour of Kraków: An Unexpected Restaurant City.
All these memories of home rush back to me as I walk through the Krakòw’s Old Town. They make me curious about the foods that were on my mother’s plate when she was a child. Unfortunately, it was a subject that never came up. She was busy raising a family and I was a typical teenager who felt that my parents didn’t understand me. Kevin and I started dating when I was only 14 and we moved away from our hometown when I was 19. I regret that my mother and I didn’t carve out enough time for her to share her childhood stories. So many things I’ll never know. But as I continue walking through these nearly 800 year old streets, I breathe in the connection to family and tradition. Eventually Kevin and I stop at a place to eat the stuffed cabbage and tomato sauce of my youth. The sight and the smell and the taste create the magic to transport me to my mother’s cheerful lemon yellow kitchen and I am a child again surrounded by the flavors of love.
This is what travel gives to me.
