Sawata

Actor Boy has this idea that doing a theatrical piece with his mother is an interesting work to create.  We started this voyage with a simple improvised stage piece that we (he did most of it) performed for small theater festivals locally and on the west coast.  It was reasonably successful and we had alot of fun comments about how cool for a mother and son to go on stage together.

Not enough.  Actor Boy decided we should do another piece.  Our ancestry is from Poland so his idea was to travel back to Poland and research our geneology and find our Polish roots.  It's been quite a ride and I just returned from our second trip to Poland.  The first trip in November 2013 was about research.  We drove all around Poland's countryside, went to both my parents' home towns, were able to find documents and history, met alot of people and ate alot of Polish food.  It was good.  This trip was slightly different.  We spent 2 weeks in a theatre that was entirely black (they call it a black box theatre - imagine that), working on creating a piece of work, or part of it and then performing for a couple of audiences who would give us feedback and suggestions.  We would start early in the morning and work until about 8 p.m. and start all over again the next morning.  That shattered any notion of this being a trip to a foreign country being even remotely romantic.

The one thing I managed to salvage for my own interests was learning more about Polish food.  Most local food is heavily meat laden but since I was travelling with 6 other people, most of whom were either vegetarian or vegan we didn't spend much time sampling local meat meals.  I did learn to take some meat meals and adjust them and learned a whole lot about salads.

My favourite salad, a potato type salad is called Sawata.  I had to come home and make it right away.  It's a little time consuming with all the tiny chopping but so worth it and I even found some shortcuts.

Ingredients

3-4 potatoes boiled in their jackets and cooled
3-4 hard boiled eggs
2-3 dill pickles, diced small (I used Vlasic pickles)
peas and carrots - I used 1/2 bag of frozen peas and carrots - worked great
(if you prefer you can boil 4 carrots with the potatoes, dice small and add canned,drained peas at the end)
2 Tbsp chopped parsley
1 heaping Tbsp dijon mustard
3-4 Tbsp mayonnaise

Directions

1.  Boil potatoes and cool before peeling
2.  Dice potatoes, eggs, dill pickles really small and add to bowl
3.  Add 1/2 bag or more (1 1/2 cups) frozen peas and carrots
4.  Add mustard and mayo and gently combine all finishing with the chopped parsley.

So so good.  This salad is a staple for all Polish celebrations.  There's really no set way to make it and I've seen it with boiled parsnip in it as well - equally as good.