Christmas is over?

Not in Warsaw! After Christmas you can still enjoy all the lights along Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat Street, but people of Warsaw favourites are the Nativity Scenes beside the altars of the oldest and the most beautiful churches and cathedrals of the capital. Located around the Old & New Town they are Christmas peace of art. It's worth to take a walk around them and see them all; it'll take you no more than an hour. Take a look at the map.

Nativity in modern style; Church of St Anne on Krakowskie Przedmieście Street (photo by "fotopasja")

View Most beautiful churches & cathedrals with Nativity Scenes in Warsaw in a larger map

How to make 'Kutia'?

Kutia Wigilijna, or Christmas Cooked Wheat Pudding, consisting of whole or cracked wheat (rice for the aristocracy!), honey and nuts (and sometimes raisins, poppyseeds and cream) is typically the first course served at the Christmas Eve dinner known as Wigilia. On About.com I have found a perfect recipe to cook real Kutia. Try it :)


Makes 6 servings Polish Christmas Cooked Wheat Pudding - Kutia
Prep Time: 1 hour
Cook Time: 3 hours
Total Time: 4 hours
Ingredients:
Note: Wheat berries are available at health food stores and online, but kamut berries, whole-grain barley or rice can be substituted (cooking time must be adjusted) with good effect.
.
1 cup wheat berries or kamut berries, rinsed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup poppyseeds
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
4 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
Zest of 1 lemon
2/3 cup plumped raisins
1/2 cup ground walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup coarsely ground blanched almonds (optional)
5 plumped figs, chopped (optional)
5 plumped dates, chopped (optional)
1/2 cup half-and-half
Preparation:
Place rinsed wheat berries in a large pot or Dutch oven and cover with water by about 5 inches. Stir, cover and let stand overnight.

When ready to cook, drain the wheat berries, rinse, drain again and place back in the pot. Add 6 cups cold water and salt, bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook until tender (anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours). Drain and set aside to cool.

Prepare poppyseeds by placing them in a saucepan with water to cover by several inchesen the fingers. Drain and grind once in a poppyseed grinder or 3 times in a regular grinder.

In a large bowl, combine cooled, cooked wheat, ground poppyseeds, confectioners' sugar, honey, vanilla, zest, raisins and some or all of the following, if using -- walnuts, almonds, figs and dates. Mix well and add half-and-half, incorporating thoroughly. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Cooking for Christmas

Polish Christmas tradition is very old and rich. In the afternoon, after the first star shines on the sky, families gather together around Christmas table to celebrate the time baby Jesus was born. During this festive dinner we give each other presents, we sing Christmas carols (in Poland you can find hundreds of them!), we put some hay under the tablecloth, we leave one empty plate for a stranger and of course we eat twelve traditional dishes prepared especially for Christmas time. The meals represent twelve Apostles. The main offerings are fish and mushrooms as due to the nativity fast, no meat is allowed on Christmas Eve.

The traditional dishes are: mushroom soup, beet soup with small dumplings called 'uszka', carp: fried and in jelly, cabbage with pea, cabbage with mushrooms (something like Polish 'bigos'), boiled or fried 'pierogi' (dumplings) with cabbage and mushrooms; pasta with poppy, sugar and honey; dry fruit compote. There are also served traditional cakes such as gingerbread and poppy-seed cake. Below you'll find some recipies:

Dumplings with cabbage and mushrooms:
Ingredients for cake:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup warm water
pinch of salt-to taste


Ingredients for filling:
0.5 kg sauerkraut, 17.63 oz
0.2 kg of dried mushrooms, 7.05 oz
1 onion,
salt, pepperExecution: Pour water over dried mushrooms and let stand for about 1 hour.After an hour, cook mushrooms until soft in water in which they were soaked. Sauerkraut pour water and cook for about 15 minutes.When cooked, drain off and cut the cabbage.After cooked, drain off mushrooms and cut into very fine or run through a meat grinder.Dice the onion and fry in oil. Add the chopped cabbage and sliced mushrooms to the onions. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for 10 minutes. Mix flour with salt and add hot water.Knead the dough.Roll out the dough.Trim the appropriate glass shapes.Then we put the stuffing in the center of the cake.We combine the two sides, and glue. Boil water, add a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of oil. At the boiling water throw dumplings.Cook over low heat about 5 minutes. Serve with fried onions.

A letter to Santa Claus

If you are spending the time before Christmas in Poland, think about taking home not only memories but also presents for your beloved ones :) There are plenty of traditional Polish products which should have its place on a present list to Santa Claus!

1) Laces from Koniaków
Beautiful and amazingly precise handicraft from Koniaków, a village in the South of Poland, in Beskid Śląski (Silesian County). Laces from Koniaków are absolutely unique and well-known around the world, especially tablecloths, traycloths, curtains and... underwear.
Original licensed laces from Koniaków you'll find here (also a lingerie) and here.

Traycloth, size M costs around 50 pln.

2) Folk art paper cutting from Łowicz
Łowicz is a small town in Łódzkie County, nearly 90 km from Warsaw. It's a very important spot on Polish cultural map, because the town has always had its own culture as well as local dialect, dance and clothes. Folklore from Łowicz had a big influence on whole Polish tradition. One of the Łowicz's specialities are paper cuts, which were very fashionable home decorations of XIX and XX century, especially before Christmas and Easter. A paper cut from Łowicz has to be symmetrical, cut with the scissors used originally to cut sheep and colorful. You can buy them on folkstar.

Paper cuts aren't very expensive. The price depends on the size. Small cuts cost 20 pln but price can rise up to 150 pln if the cutting is very big with a lot of details. It looks amazing on the wall.

3) Honey
The Drahimski Honey (from the Polish Seaside) which has very light, yellow colour or Spadziowy Honey (from the Polish Mountains) which is more brownish are traditional Polish honeys made according to the traditional recipe. If you want to be sure that a jar you are buying contains original honey, visit one of the eco e-shops or honey e-shop :)

4) Winter clothes
They are made of wool of the sheeps from Tatra Mountains. Good woolen products you can buy in Zakopane, Nowy Targ or in the internet (merino-polska.pl). The choice is very wide: slippers, quilts, blankets, jerkins, sweaters and many many more.

Shopping in Zakopane

5) Gingerbread fromToruń
From over 700 years, gingerbreeads have been baked in Toruń and made the town famous. According to the legend, it were the bees who told the princess to add honey to the gingerbread she was baking. The cake was supposed to be given to a king as a present. He liked the gingerbread so much that he has made it famous all around Europe. Small gingerbreads are often called "Katarzynki" from the name of the princess who has made them for the first time. Gingerbread from Toruń is believed to be the most delicious and also it is ideal sweet for lovers ;) You can buy them in Toruń or in almost every supermarket in Poland.

Prices of the gingerbreads are very different. It's also great decoration to hang on a christmas tree.

Happy Birthday Palm!

The Palm from De Gaulle's roundabout is 10 years old! Many people wonder why there is a canary island date palm in one of the Warsaw's most popular spots. The palm is part of a project 'Greetings from Jerusalem Avenue' by Joanna Rajkowska. The author of the project had planned to put a lane of palms along the street called Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue) but at the end they decided to put just one palm at the junction of Jerusalem Avenue and Nowy Świat street, on some kind of a traffic island.

The tree is 15 m tall, it's waterproof and made mainly of plastic. There was a long discussion going on during preparations to make the idea of the palm come true. There were many doubts about who's gonna take care of the palm, who will pay for it, how long should it stand on the roundabout, about copyright lawsand of course about its political and cultural context.

Origins of the project date back to the artist’s journey to Israel (in Tel-Awiw there is a street called Jerusalem Avenue too) and her attempt to realise and the others aware of the significance of Jerusalem Avenue to Warsaw, the street’s history and the vacuum caused by the absence of Jewish community. It was supposed to be also a social experiment, testing whether the Polish society is ready to absorb such a culturally alien item. The spot at which the palm has been placed before the year 2002 had been used for a Christmas tree :)

The palm still sparks extreme feelings. It has divided Warsovians into those treating it as a symbol of a city and a society welcoming the others, developing, focused on the change, and those that support order, tradition and a city closed for strangers. The palm brings about many divisions and fuels conflicts deeply hidden in Polish society. It contains a lot of humour and irony as well, which saves it from definitions that could subdue it to any ideology. However, despite many different statements about the palm, it has become a symbol of Warsaw and one of the most characteristic points of the city.

More about the Palm you'll find on the official website: http://www.palma.art.pl/

View in Poniatowski's Bridge direction

Warsaw Christmas Walk

Enjoy winter in Warsaw by walking around beautifully lit city with a cup of mulled wine in your hand :) This map will show you where to eat the best "makowiec", where to see the most beautiful nativity scene and the tallest christmas tree in Poland!

Click here to download the map and fall in love with Warsaw for Christmas :)

Presents from St Nick!

Probably you have already noticed that in Poland we celebrate much during autumn and winter. That's because during those seasons we don't get much sunlight here and we have to focus on something joyful. You have heard about Andrzejki recently. Nearly week after it we enjoy Mikołajki - Saint Nicolas Day. It's not only Polish tradition, you can meet it in many other countries, but the way it is celebrated is slightly different everywhere. Even in Poland there is a variety of ways to celebrate Mikołajki, depending on a region you are currently in...

Most popular gifts for Mikołajki are gingerbread cookies or Santa Claus made of chocolate. (piernikarnia.blogspot.hu)

In some parts of Poland, probably in the south, people have believed that St Nicolas is a patron of shepherds and that he saves the ewes and cattle from wolves. On 6th December, people used to offer St Nicolas wreaths made of flax and some herbs. They also put eggs, which are a symbol of life and fertility, on them.

In the north of Poland, in Kaszuby, St Nicolas was called 'Gwiazdor'. He acted like St Nick but he looked different - he was wearing fur and all his face was smutty.

In Poznań people believe that at night on 5th December, Santa Claus looks through a window and if he sees that all shoes of in the household are clean, he leaves a gift for each member of the family. But if the shoes are dirty - he leaves a rotten potato.

In the centre of Poland (Mazowsze), over hundred years ago on 6th December somebody from a village dreesed up like a St Nicolas and in a company of an angel and a devil he visited all the children who lived in a town. He asked them if they know all the prayers well and he asked their parents if their behaviour was good. If the child was polite, was given a small present (gingerbread, apple, nuts) if not - he received a rod!

Polish story about St Nicolas tells that he was a bishop of Mira (some area in today's Turkey). One day, a man living in Mira has gone out of business and he lost all his possessions. The worst was that he wanted to send away his daughters to become prostitutes. To save them from this fate, bishop Nicolas is believed to pop three sacks packed with coins through a chimney of the man's house. The coins fell on the floor and you could find them strewn around, even in shoes, slippers and socks. That's why on 5th December night people (I mean Santa Claus :) give each other small gifts (sweets are most popular) by hiding them inside big colorful socks or under the pillow.

Gwiazdor - St Nick from Kaszuby