Get Polish eats at Holy Trinity’s Frozen Food Sale
By John Fladd
[email protected]
If you’ve been waiting all year for Polish food, it’s time to order it.
The Holy Trinity Cathedral’s big fundraising event of the year is its annual Frozen Polish Food Sale. According to Karen Sobiechowski, one of the organizers, unless you personally have a Polish grandmother this might be your best chance to score some authentic homemade Polish food.
“We are selling potato and cheese pierogi and cabbage pierogi,” she said. “We’re selling kapusta, which is like a sauerkraut cabbage with pork in it. We’re selling kielbasa, and then we have also golabki, which are stuffed cabbage.”
Sobiechowski said the parish didn’t always sell its food frozen.
“We used to have a holiday fair for many, many years,” she said, “and people would line up around the block to buy their Polish food. We had a few more parishioners back in the day, and as you might imagine we were all getting older, and when Covid hit we took a year off. We didn’t do a holiday fair where we would serve hot food or anything, because people were afraid to come out.”
Like many parishes, Holy Trinity found that its pool of volunteers was getting smaller and older. Some of them “were frail or some had passed on,” Sobiechowski said. She said the secret to pulling off a big food event like the Frozen Food Sale is pacing. “We don’t have the same team we had before. There’s fewer of us, so we have to plan our volunteer hours and do the best we can. The frozen food sale seems to work, because it satisfies people’s needs for good Polish food that they like, but it’s a lot of work to make it yourself. So we do the work for you, but you can take it home and have it at your leisure with your family.”
Each year there is a large demand for Holy Trinity’s food.
“It’s nice to see the smiles on people’s faces when they get their Polish food,” Sobiechowski said. “We’re having this close to the holidays, and so people that we only see occasionally, you know, that may not be part of the parish, but maybe their grandparents were or something, or people that just know about the food that we sell here, and they’re just always so happy to get it again and to be able to share it with their families.”
The food is so popular that Sobiechowski and her team have had to put limits on the amount of certain foods that people can buy.
“There’s a limit of four dozen [pierogi] per person on each order, so it would be a total of four dozen in any combination of those,” she said.
What makes Polish food so popular?
“Well, fat equals flavor,” Sobiechowski said, “let’s put it that way. I won’t go into detail, but we use good-quality products and everything, but it’s made with love. It’s just hearty food. [Traditionally], the Polish peasants had to sustain themselves for the work that they had to do, and so it’s hearty. There’s potatoes and cabbage — whatever grew in that environment. … Nowadays, it reminds us of the food our grandmothers would make, and so there’s a connection with the past.”
Sobiechowski is personally excited about the cabbage pierogi. “I’ve had them in other places,” she said, “and they’re not the same as here. And I’ve tried making them at home and they don’t come out quite the same. But they’re really, really good.”
She is always impressed at the power Polish food — or any food — has to bring people together at the holidays. “Sometimes there are people who might not be on the best of terms with one another,” Sobiechowski said, “but when they share food, things are forgiven and forgotten, and they can move ahead. It’s a really neat thing to happen.”
The Holy Trinity Cathedral’s Frozen Food Sale
When: Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Where: at the Cathedral’s rectory at 166 Pearl St. in Manchester
Food can be ordered now. The order form can be found on the Cathedral’s website: holytrinitypncc.org. The organizers encourage you to order early, because the foods are limited and sold on a first-come-first-served basis. Sales are cash or check only. Call the rectory at 622-4524, or email [email protected].
Featured Photo: Filling Orders. Courtesy photo.
