What do people in Poland eat in a day?
Poles eat sandwiches for breakfast, have obiad, the hot main meal of soup and a main course, somewhere between 13:00 and 17:00, and keep kolacja in the evening light.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Śniadanie is usually kanapki, open sandwiches of bread or a roll with butter, ham, cheese, tomato and cucumber. Twaróg, a fresh white cheese often mixed with radish and chives, is a classic, and so are scrambled eggs. Many people take a second breakfast, drugie śniadanie, to work or school for around 10:00.
Lunch
Obiad is the main hot meal, eaten between about 13:00 and 17:00, often when people get home from work. It is usually two courses: a soup such as rosół or żurek, then meat with potatoes and a salad. Kotlet schabowy, a breaded pork cutlet of about 400 kcal, with potatoes and cabbage is the classic Sunday plate.
Dinner
Kolacja, around 19:00, looks a lot like breakfast: bread, cold cuts, cheese, pickles and tea. Some families eat something warm instead, like pierogi or naleśniki, thin pancakes filled with sweet cheese. On Christmas Eve dinner becomes Wigilia, twelve meatless dishes with carp, barszcz and pierogi.
Starters
Soup is the starter, and many Poles have one every day. Rosół, a clear chicken broth with thin noodles, is the Sunday soup at about 180 kcal a bowl. Żurek, a sour rye soup with sausage and egg, belongs to Easter and is sometimes served in a bread bowl. At parties the table opens with herring, pickles and cold meats.
Desserts
Sernik, a baked cheesecake made with twaróg, and szarlotka, an apple cake, are on almost every café menu. Pączki, round doughnuts filled with rose jam, are sold all year but mostly on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent, when bakeries have queues. One pączek is about 300 kcal.
Drinks
Tea is the everyday drink, often black with lemon. With obiad many families drink kompot, a cold drink of fruit boiled in water with a little sugar. Beer is the most common alcohol, and vodka is drunk chilled in small shots, usually with food, at weddings and celebrations.
Street food
Zapiekanka is half a baguette topped with mushrooms and melted cheese, finished with ketchup, about 650 kcal, and the stalls on Plac Nowy in Kraków are famous for it. Kraków also sells obwarzanek, a ring shaped bread, from street carts, and in the Tatra mountains people grill oscypek, a smoked sheep cheese, with cranberry jam.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
A sweet main course is normal: pasta with strawberries and cream, or pancakes with cheese, can be the whole obiad in summer. Before Christmas some families keep a live carp in the bathtub for a few days. And on the Tuesday before Lent, homes and bars serve pickled herring with vodka, a night called śledzik.