Tlusty Czwartek

Back to business and not the healthy kind – today we are celebrating Fat Thursday or ‘Tłusty Czwartek’ as it is called in Poland. A day for eating doughnuts, or Polish pączki, as well as sweet pastry twists known as chrusty, or faworki and as much sweet food as you can get your hands on.

Fat Thursday is, in fact, celebrated in many countries all over the world – in Italy my sister is celebrating Giovedì Grasso and the start of Carnevale. In Germany, you might finish work early and get an unofficial holiday. Fat Thursday officially signals the start of lent in the Christian calendar – you try and use up all the butter, sugar and eggs in the house that you are not supposed to eat until Easter Sunday and in some cases, you also give up meat – carnevale actually means ‘to say farewell to meat’. In England, we wait until Shrove Tuesday, of course, and eat pancakes. Either way, there’s no better day, or excuse to miss out on eating Polish doughnuts, a taste of my childhood, traditionally filled with plum jam or rose petal jam and drizzled with icing. Today, I’ve been invited to my local Polish delicatessen to eat doughnuts with them (Poles are incredibly friendly and hospitable!) and I’ve baked a delicious Polish sernik or cheesecake and lots of other Polish treats to eat with friends tonight.