Where people used to cook and bake?
Food was prepared on the open fire (nolepa) and in the oven (PEC) in the past and in the first half of the 20th century. The fire was kept on the edge of the oven and when it was necessary to cook something, hot coals were simply dug out from the oven on an open fire and the pots and pans were laid on them. Above the fireplace there hung a large iron boiler for heating water and bread was baked in the oven. Only later people cooked on the stove added to the corner of the oven and then instead of oven a stove with oven was built. Fire was always lighted up with a quartz stone and a steel sharpener.
Table rules
All people sat down at the table together. The biggest portion was for the landlord, then all those who worked hard during the day or were going to work hard and then the stable boys and children who sat at the table if there was enough space or on the floor. The housewise and daughter-in-law who fed the youngest children had the smallest portion. Who was late or ate slowly was usually hungry.
Soup (Polyvka or zupa)
If you ask an old housekeeper about polyvka or zupa, she answers it was cooked rarely. Terms Polyvka and Zupa do not coincide with the meaning of our soup. Zupa - it was usually soup from beef, pork or poultry meat, but Polyvka had to be with flour roux and potatoes or even mushrooms. Often, however, it is very difficult to distinguish Polyvka from Zupa and Polyvka from a Sauce and flour, respectively potato cooked meals.
However, the soup formed profuse and often the only main meal of the day, and therefore it was cooked denser to saturate and add strength that was needed. One of the best known and most common known kapušňunka (kapušnice) a soup from sauerkraut water with added pork leg or "bacon" skin. A roux from bacon and onion and cumin was added and boiled potatoes were the side dish.
Chudo Jeva soup was very easy to prepare. Boiled potatoes were put on the plate, a fat was added if it was possible and than it was filled with hot salty water with cumin.
Zalyvajka was a rather rare soup from smoked meat bathed in milk.
Domikot was a thick soup with potatoes cooked with bay leaf, mushrooms and "something from the pig-sticking", water from sauerkraut was added too plus handful of cabbage and roux, sometimes a cream mixed with an egg with a little flour was added.
Soup from leaven tasted like wine and was prepared from the leaven remained after baking bread. Leaven was cooked in water and thickened with "kłutkum" from cream. A very common meal was also Ščirka or denser form švołki - wheat flour mixed with an egg in a bowl, the crumbs were boiled in a fresh or "vjyrovanego" (skimmed) milk and a bit of butter or cream was added. Milk soups were very frequent meals, they were also made from whey - Syřonka and sour milk.
Kurmunina was an economic kind of scrambled egg. It was prepared from the eggs mixed with the milk poured on the pan with the fat, the flour was added and the warm dinner was decorated with parsley.
Bryja sweet soup was cooked from fresh fruit cooked until it was soft then thickened with the cream with flour and seasoned with sugar. Potatoes were the side dish.
Other often cooked soups were čoskula, grochula, gřibjonka, špyrčunka.
Which food was eaten the most?
We would not be in the Jablunkov region if we did not remind that perhaps everyone who lived here, from poor kumornik to rich farmer, was growing cabbage. The cabbage with potatoes formed the basis of every diet. A pauper harvested half a flower-bed, others only a few but the rich man had to empty one room so that all the cabbage fits in before they started to cut it and pickle it. And no wonder then that they sometimes pickled five hectoliters of cabbage. Besides the popular kapušnice, cabbage was prepared in many different ways, sometimes it was thickened with a flour or "pražunka", sometimes just with crushed potatoes, bacon or fat added. It was also the only food which was allowed to be eaten by all family members during a day, and it was a rarity. A small part of cabbage cones was kept in the cellar then used for kožo broda - cabbage was cut into four to six pieces and thickened up.
Another crop, which formed the basis of the diet were potatoes. As a substitute for bread they were eaten every day. In addition to all the potato soups were the goodies also pancakes placki which were poured by cream after baking, then podlešniki (polešniki) baked in cabbage leaves, with added bacon, spread with cream and sprinkled with cottage cheese, also sometimes sprinkled with nuts and gingerbread in the richer families. Baked potato dough on the pan was known as brutvaňok, if the bottom layer were potatoes - middle layer cabbage and pepper - and the top layer were potatoes - it was Kapusník (kapušnok), and when plums were added to the potato dough, it was the Copa, which was poured with cream.
The old-fashioned dishes, which preceded the so-called potato diet were floury meals cooked in water and semolina mash. The best-known dish from flour is čyr. Flour was thrown into the boiling water, salted and finally milk was added. Šulki were kneaded from flour and water (milk) and the milk was poured on them. Gałuški or kluzki were prepared similarly, just the dough was more washy. Zatěrky and švołki were also made from flour, and they consisted of flour plus water crumbled into the hot milk. Semolina porridge was cooked in water, milk and whey. Subsequently they were salted, fat or irrigated milk was added. Flour and semolina meals, however were soon replaced by potato dishes.
The time of poverty
At the times of poverty (hungry years from 1847 to 1856), which was not uncommon at that time and when people suffered from hunger, they had to do many cost-saving solutions. So valuable bread which had to satisfy poor families for two or three weeks was replaced by beans which children took half boiled to school as a snack. Wheat or rye was not planted only oats. The most difficult time, a time of famine, advice came on the appropriate additives to bread flour from the manor. Mostly it was finely chopped wheat and oat straw, even the roots of pyruvate. The tree bark, a young grass, and a raspberry soup was eaten. People ate soups from bran, flax seed, tree mushrooms, and virtually everything what they found.
