Polish-American Food: Stanley’s Market in North Toledo

Thursday, August 16, 2012

(Part of the research I'm doing for the Center's series on foodways traditions in northwest Ohio...)

I spent a delightful Thursday at Stanley’s Market in North Toledo in what used to be a neighborhood with thriving businesses run by and catering to the Polish community there. Most of the Polish immigrants came to Toledo in the early 1900s to work in the auto industry and settled in two neighborhoods, Lagrinka (which turned into LaGrange Street) and Kuschwantz. Both neighborhoods centered on a catholic church (St. Hedwig’s) and were essentially villages where people spoke Polish to one another, purchased familiar foods, and enjoyed a familiar cultural and social life. As the immigrants settled in and became established, though, they began moving to suburbs where their children could become Americanized and attend better schools. Some of the old businesses remained, and families frequently returned to them to purchase items for holidays, family reunions, and for “old time’s sake.”

Stanley’s Market began in 1932 as a kielbasa stand by a Ukranian immigrant (national borders at the time were somewhat vague and cultures and languages were frequently shared). In 1935, he bought the building where the Market is today and became known for his homemade sausage (kielbasa). He sold the business after “the war” (WWII) to a Polish family who still runs it today.

Joe, the son, is a friendly and hospitable businessman and promoter of Polish culture. The market still features his renowned kielbasa along with pierogi, sauerkraut, hot dog sauce, horse radish, bakery breads, and other Polish items (sweet and sour cabbage, stuffed cabbage rolls, potato pancakes). A special shelf stocks Polish beers and liquors, and the walls are decorated with Polish items, including a blackboard with the Polish word for the week. T-shirts with Stanley’s Market inscribed on them and mugs with Polish writing are also offered. Obviously, Polish pride is taken for granted!

Other items are included that reflect the changing neighborhood—southern “soul” food items like catfish nuggets, corn bread mixes, batter for frying chicken or pork chops. Also, some of the Polish food has been “up-dated.” Marjoram is the featured herb in the kielbasa, but with the growing popularity of spicy dishes and chilis, Hungarian paprika has been added to make a hot version. The sausages are also smoked, and these are frequently sold as snacks to be eaten on the spot. (or in the car on the way home…)

Several customers stopped to chat with us as we videotaped the store. One said that he was 73 years old and had been shopping there longer than Joe had run the place. A woman had run out of bread and had to come shopping a day earlier than her usual weekly shopping day. Another woman said she remembered her mother calling the “pigs-in-a-blanket”or cabbage rolls glomka in Polish. She said she always came to Stanley’s to buy them. Others said they came here for the kielbasa and pierogi. It was the last store left in the area that made those items.

The surroundings of the store suggested it’s lone status as a hold-out of the old neighborhood. Boarded up windows and abandoned buildings spoke of the disappearance of the old Polish community, whether through aging or suburban-flight. Even the beautiful old churches were dwindling in their use and were closing their congregations. Joe and other customers wistfully mused that children don’t appreciate the old ways but that it’s also the nature of progress and moving on. Maybe, though, the future can include not only recognition and celebration of the Polish heritage but also see some of that heritage as vital and useful to living today. That’s easy to imagine at a venue like Stanley’s Market, where the food speaks volumes about ethnicity and is also very, very tasty.

For more information about Stanley’s Market, see http://stanleysmarket.com.

An excellent resource for information on the Polish in Toledo is the Toledo Polish Genealogical Society, http://tpgs02.org/history.htm.

Stanley’s Market is being featured in our educational documentary video series on Northwest Ohio Foodways Traditions. See www.foodandculture.org.

July 3, 2012  Latino Food at the Dayton Cityfolk Festival

The Dayton Cityfolk Festival was this past weekend (June 29-July 1), and I had the honor of working in the Latino Culture Tent with artists and cooks representing a number of countries from Central and South America (and Texas, which likes to consider itself its own country). Most of the individuals now live in Ohio, and it is a reminder of the wealth of cultures we have here as well as the diversity that gets lumped under the terms “Latino” or “Hispanic.”

A good example was in one of the foodways panels that I helped moderate. Gloria is Mexican-American from San Antonio, Texas who moved to northwest Ohio when she was a child. Leticia was born in Mexico City but came to Columbus, OH when she was 28; and Yasmina, of Croatian heritage, grew up in Argentina before immigrating to the US to Yellow Springs, Ohio. All three are considered Latina, but have had very different experiences and very different thoughts on their ethnicity—and how it is expressed through their food. And their food is very different.

They all discussed the ways in which their food has evolved. Some ingredients that used to be regional are now easier to get now: Gloria remembers her mother not being able to get chili peppers in northwest Ohio, so having to depend on relatives or friends bringing them back from Texas when they visited. That gradually changed, but even now, the variety of peppers is not available in the stores (or they’re expensive). She has friends who grow different kinds and give them to her. Leticia could get any regional ingredient she needed in Mexico City, since it’s the hub of commerce for the country. Columbus offers a lot, but not as much as Mexico City, and chili peppers were not a problem for Yasmina at all since they are not used in traditional Argentinean or Croatian cooking. She said the most important food in Argentina is beef, and grilling meat is the national foodways and pastime. (Sounds like they have a lot in common with many Anglo-Americans!)

Tortillas are similarly complicated. The corn “flour” for corn tortillas, the traditional type in Mexico is processed with alkaline (lime, potash, ashes, lye) in order to soften the hull. This process, known as nixtamalization, also releases niacin (vitamin b), making the corn healthier to eat. Hominy (posole) is made this way. The softened corn kernels have to be rinsed carefully and then are ground to make the dough for the tortillas, which traditionally accompany every meal. This is usually a daily chore, and a demanding one. Gloria said that her mother always made flour tortillas since they couldn’t get the corn flour in northwest Ohio, but she also remembers the tortillas in Texas being wheat also. Leticia found that strange since corn is so central to Mexican foodways (and is held sacred in older belief systems). I wonder if it might reflect the Colonial Anglo-American preference for wheat flour and wheat bread and the dismissal of corn as being animal feed and the food of the “savages.” Gloria thinks it was just a matter of what was available, but the others want to look into that more.

Yasmina’s yerba mate tradition drew a lot of attention, partly because audiences thought she was smoking something somewhat illegal! It is a tea that has long been used in Argentina and Paraguay and has numerous anti-oxidants. It is also a stimulant and can be used in place of coffee. According to Yasmina, it is drunk all day long in Argentina, and a bowl is oftentimes shared with friends. The part that caught peoples’ attention was the way that it is served—in a small gourd with a wooden straw. She also had variations on that—elaborate silver and decorated bowls and straws. She shared the tea with anyone willing (which, of course, included me). It was naturally bitter, so she put sugar in it. She said the leaves were boiled in milk to give to children.  She sent me home with all the makings for it that I need, so I plan to experiment with it, all in the name of research, of course!

packages of yerba mate

Yasmina explaining yerba mate

Breads and tamales on the Mexican Day of the Dead table.

Gloria telling how to make Mexican bread pudding (cheese, no eggs or milk)

Corn and peanuts at the Mexican Day of the Dead Altar

 (with her friend/assistant from Peru)

Leticia's Mexican Day of the Dead altar

The experiences I had at the festival affirmed my opinion of Latin cultures generally being warm and hospitable, eager to share their food, their knowledge, and their good times. (That was demonstrated on Saturday night after the festival closed, and the musicians stayed up until 2 a.m. entertaining the rest of us.) It was fascinating to get to know the artists and cooks as individuals, though. Like all of us, they each have their own story to tell and their own take on their cultural identity. Also, for our good fortune, they each have their own recipes, too!  

Food and Fiddle

March 14, 2012

Connections. That almost sounds calculating, kind of like “networking,” using people for what they can give you. What I mean by it is a sense of connectedness to a place or to other people or to one’s own past, or to a present and future. It is a feeling that one has a place within this vast universe and, in some way, matters because of that.

Connectedness has always been important to me, I think because I grew up feeling slightly on the outside of every culture and group I was in. I now know that we are all “on the outside”, so to speak.

Food in a strange way offered me connections. I didn’t like to cook--I grew up surrounded by brothers and was offended when I was told I had to work in the kitchen while they could play outside. Naturally, I rebelled. But I loved to eat. I loved the tastes of food; the way food seemed to bring the whole world to a halt to concentrate it in those acts of chewing and swallowing.

That may have been because both my mother and her mother were wonderful cooks. Both were grounded in the southern traditions of frying and making pan gravy, biscuits, green beans flavored with fatback (my mother later left out the fatback and steamed vegetables), sauces, and wonderful desserts. In my early years, we went to my grandparents’ house in Kannapolis on Sundays for Sunday dinner (the big family meal after church—both of which were southern institutions). I remember my grandmother cooking and serving wonderful dinners. I would eat and eat, usually to the point of a stomachache from eating too much! My brothers and I would turn eating into a competition, but I oftentimes overate out of the sheer joy of the food.

To this day, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, biscuits, cold slaw, fried corn, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, and pecan pie take me back to my grandmother’s table. That’s also the quintessential southern meal, but for me it’s special and very personal. I’m named after my grandmother--her name was Lucille—and my mother was adamant that I inherit her violin, which I now play as a fiddle for old-time music and in a band, the Root Cellar String Band. Memories of those meals, then, definitely connect me to my past and my family, but they also connect me to my own present, a present that combines that past with all the new potentials for connectedness.

Beginning the connection

Nourishing connections—To Food, Through Food

March 9, 2012

A birthday seems like an appropriate time to start a project like this food blog. It offers a way to measure life every year, not so much in terms of progress towards a goal, but more as a time to evaluate how life is being lived.

I focus on food here, but I’m not the standard foodie. I’ve always loved to eat and to explore new foods and socialize around food. But I always also did a lot of thinking through food. That might be because I became aware very young that there were differences in the ways in which different people and cultures ate and that food and eating could mean different things to different people. The differences don’t sound like much—Appalachian North Carolina (my father’s side) and piedmont North Carolina (my mother’s)—I felt them and frequently felt on the outside. Then we moved to northern Virginia when I was about 7 and I learned that I had an accent and ate weird food like grits. Then we moved to Korea (my father was with the State Department), and that introduced me to real cultural differences—and also the fact that people were still people regardless of the language they spoke, the color of their skin, or the strange food they ate. From there it was a logical step to studying folklore, ethnomusicology, anthropology, and philosophy in school, and then applying all of that to food. 

So, I’m now a food studies scholar, but this blog isn’t about that. It’s about how food gives me a sense of connection to my own past, to other people, to places, and to the possibilities in the present. I learn about things through food and think through things with food. I also like to give to people by cooking for them or by creating meal opportunities (parties). Those are the things I’ll be writing about here. I hope my musings are useful—and enjoyable—for other people as well, and that they nourish the imagination and soul, if not the stomach…