Country #1: Poland

It's on.  The countries have been printed out, snipped out, folded and put into the official Christmas candy tin.  I looked through our basement for the official Eating Like The World tin, but came up empty handed.  Admittedly I didn't look for very long.

Moving on...with much fanfare (which sounded to my ears like squabbling children) we had our oldest daughter reach into the tin and pull out our first destination.  It was.... drum-roll please...

Poland.

I'll admit, I was hoping for something more exotic.  An Indonesia.  A Sumatra. (I'm not sure Sumatra's on the list, even)  Something to shock-and-awe my palate and make the kids check out and run screaming for pizza rolls at the neighbor's house.  Maybe Poland isn't such a bad start, with their pierogies and kielbasa.

There's a tie-in for me, as well:  Most of my family came from Poland around the turn of the century.  My great-grandfather and great-grandmother on my mother's side both emigrated from Poland separately and met in the United States.  My grandfather was born here in 1914, first generation American for the Zimmerman family...likewise with my grandmother, also a first-generation American.  I've grown up with the occasional stuffed cabbage or sausage & sauerkraut dinner, but I'm interested to find out what else the typical Polish family eats in a week.  Stay tuned!