Shameless

They don’t make Stanley Tucci movies about Eastern European food. Guy Fieri ain’t housing halushki, getting bits of errant egg noodle all stuck all up in his bottled blonde flavor saver. Fermented veg and lard-studded shredded meats aren’t vibrant enough for the ‘gram. In other words, this cuisine ain’t cool, at least by the standards of media gatekeepers and influencers.

I get it.  I’m a first-generation Pole and a second-generation Slovakian. As a kid I was surrounded by duck blood infused soup, aka czarnina, and halubki, mucilaginous cabbage wrappers stuffed with greyish pink-tinged dry-rice studded mystery meat. 

My grandfather, a butcher by trade, made a kielbasa so garlicky, that even if you double wrapped it in Ziploc, its stinking perfume persisted. My mom would sneak it in the crisper drawer of the fridge. Dad would come home from work, open the door to the icebox, and he and the entire vampire contingent on True Blood would drop dead from the vapors. 

I was embarrassed by my culinary heritage and so committed to being a typical American kid, my mother didn’t even attempt to put any of this stuff in the lunchbox.

Instead of having the traditional immigrant child story of being made fun of in the school cafeteria, I was forced into an arguably darker place, carrying my insecurity in the form of secret shame.