I appreciated the Polish shout-out to Max Kucharski. ;-) He posts here often enough to deserve recognition!
If you want to find actual Polish-Mexican fusion food, I recommend my old 'hood, the Spring Branch neighborhood of west Houston (not to be confused with the completely separate town of Spring Branch, Texas). I'm not sure why, but Spring Branch has a significant settlement of the descendents of Polish immigrants, to the point that they have an annual Polish Festival there. There's also a healthy dose of Mexicans and Mexican restaurants there (along with a few dozen other ethnicities... it's quite the melting pot). I can't say I've ever seen a specific Polish-Mexican fusion restaurant there, but it's the first place I'd look for one.
Thank you, or rather serdecznie dziękuję for your kind words! It means a lot to me! Though everything I have to say is merely "an excerpt of near-Vistulan reality", as people often say here, plus James' content sparking what he described as "seeing oneself/one's family in him", which I felt a couple times. I'm happy to know you appreciate my perspective as much as I'm grateful for all the useful apps and stories you bring with each comment! I stand by what I told you in the comments here: https://jamesbreakwell.substack.com/p/the-cursed-cabinet.
P. S. I think this is also a shoutout to Maria Fernada Paz y Puente, whose stories are alike very entertaining!
I'm not an expert on cuisines, let alone mixing them, but your pick sounds like it could work fine. As for me and my family, chili con carne and tortillas often often appear on the table, the latter sometimes modified by adding some local fillings. If you ever visit Poland (or next time if you have already), I can strongly recommend trying almost every little bar/restaurant serving local dishes, especially if it's labelled as "bar mleczny"(milk bar). This eating places trace their roots from the communism times, back then providing a cheap food that didn't require meat, which distribution was very limited. Nowadays one can find there meals for all diets, including the "king of carnivore dishes", the local version of pork chop, along many kinds of salads. From personal experience I'll add these are pretty cheap and healthy. And for those feeling homesick while sightseeing in Kraków, have a coffee break at Massolit Books and Cafe (the addess is 4 Felicjanek st.), a lovely and climatic place serving wonderful hot drinks with plenty of magazines/books to read, where I headed for many years to have my extra English classes.
The first paragraph is so true and basically describes my family's outing in Ustka this June. On the first day we drove there and had a stroll down the harbour. The second day was about wandering on the beach, visiting the local sea lantern and few little museums, having fish from the Baltic Sea for dinner and spend the evening watching the USMC from nearby Redzikowo base prepare for night excercise offshore (plus a night of doing irresponsible stuff like climbing some unsupervised wrecks). But the last day was spend once again at the beach and in a museum of the Pomerania past WW2. We've also dined at the Mexican restaurant (although run by local Poles, but based on this newsletter's desires one could say they were mixing what's best from both cuisines and definitely drink menu) and set back home in the afternoon, arriving at almost midnight. From Ustka to our Kraków suburb it's over eight hours drive without jams and stops. When it comes to listening books on a journey, we've had eagerly followed the plot of mainly crime stories, historical fiction and memoirs by WW2 fighter pilot in exile, Bohdan Arct.
As for the pedestrian walkway: I think the one who destroyed it with a car poorly followed the example of the "iconic intoxicated car jumper" who five years ago in Rąbień (central Poland) made a legendary leap through a roundabout into the fenced local parish grounds. When I first learned of his action, I was glad no one else got hurt, but also laughed for a good while in disbelief, thinkin "HOW!!!". Here are the links to videos capturing this "internet hit" and providing some more details. Look for them in the second video's pinned comment. I'll only add that this year this person's driving ban has ended.
Oh, those brown roadside signs. I hadn't thought of them in years. When I was a kid on family summer vacations, my dad would stop at every.single.brown.sign along the way. And, since my youngest brother KidK couldn't read yet or only in limited fashion, Dad read every.single.word very slowly so that KidK would, haha, understand. I do think my love of history comes from this, even though us older 3 kids began rolling our eyes and groaning when we saw a sign saying "historical marker ahead".
If in no hurry, I'd much rather take a vacation or a road trip on the back roads of our country. There are a lot of websites out there with all the roadside attractions and oddities to find . Our daughter and her husband took an Old Route 66 road trip not too long ago and stopped at anything that looked interesting. The lady in the gift shop next to the World's Largest Bulldozer told her she'd never seen anyone get so excited about a bulldozer than our daughter was. haha. Guess she is more like her Grandpa than we realized.
Our mounds were on Route 66! After the ketchup bottle and the Greek food, we returned to the interstate. Exploring was fun, but by the end, we were ready to get home.
The poor ketchup bottle was almost torn down a few years ago when the attached building went vacant. The City of Collinsville saved it, but does nothing else with it but raise funds occasionally to paint it. The City has rather fallen on hard times, so I guess trying to make something of the Ketchup Bottle is too much.
The scavenger hunt app reminded me of geocaching. I think it is still a thing. I don't know if your girls would be interested - Lord knows they have enough going on - but it might be a fun thing to try. It's easier now with gps on the phones. Back in the day we had to get Magellan gps devices. Here's a link to learn about it if you aren't already familiar.
Random side quests can lead to grand adventures! I’m sure the girls will look back upon these family vacations with appreciation some day. I love the photo of the four of them sitting in a row contemplating the fountain in the distance - I wonder what they were thinking (besides “When are we heading home?”). I’m disappointed that the Jewel Box does not appear to live up to its name. But it’s off set by the world’s biggest ketchup bottle!
<<The greenhouse was just a greenhouse. After about two minutes, we had seen it all. It was mainly a very fancy event space. >> THIS!!! With such a fancy name it should be grand, instead it's just where the rich people that don't want a huge wedding get married in St Louis. The greenery is all in pots so they can move it out for events.... And I am LOL about the Collinsville ketchup bottle. #Trudat Wish the museum at Cahokia Mounds had been open, it is really good. When my kids were little they loved the video and village inside, after they got older, they appreciated the artifacts.
We drove from Modesto, CA to Orlando, FL last April 2025. My husband is a Viet Nam Veteran and his group has a large reunion every Spring. Each year somewhere different. We enjoy eating our way to each destination we choose. We were going through Texas looking for a place to eat. So we used our auto navigation system which also gives you all the restaurants that are near where you are at. Huckleberry's came up and it was only eight miles off our route. So we thought that sounds really good. We followed the directions went into a tiny town, and there was a Huckleberry's, but it was a home store, which had gone out of business. So we backtracked to the highway, and were forced to go west instead of east, went another eight miles out of our way before we could reverse our course. So we went 32 miles out of our way and still had no place to eat. Of course we found something 10 miles up the road and were saved once again from starvation. This coming Spring the reunion is in Oklahoma City.
I once found an Irish Mexican fusion restaurant. Pancho McGuillicutty’s. Best cheese enchiladas I’ve ever had!
I appreciated the Polish shout-out to Max Kucharski. ;-) He posts here often enough to deserve recognition!
If you want to find actual Polish-Mexican fusion food, I recommend my old 'hood, the Spring Branch neighborhood of west Houston (not to be confused with the completely separate town of Spring Branch, Texas). I'm not sure why, but Spring Branch has a significant settlement of the descendents of Polish immigrants, to the point that they have an annual Polish Festival there. There's also a healthy dose of Mexicans and Mexican restaurants there (along with a few dozen other ethnicities... it's quite the melting pot). I can't say I've ever seen a specific Polish-Mexican fusion restaurant there, but it's the first place I'd look for one.
It delights me that there's a place that fusion might actually exist. May I someday cross paths with it.
Thank you, or rather serdecznie dziękuję for your kind words! It means a lot to me! Though everything I have to say is merely "an excerpt of near-Vistulan reality", as people often say here, plus James' content sparking what he described as "seeing oneself/one's family in him", which I felt a couple times. I'm happy to know you appreciate my perspective as much as I'm grateful for all the useful apps and stories you bring with each comment! I stand by what I told you in the comments here: https://jamesbreakwell.substack.com/p/the-cursed-cabinet.
P. S. I think this is also a shoutout to Maria Fernada Paz y Puente, whose stories are alike very entertaining!
Not sure where this is, but at least you know your holy grail exists: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=766726171481790&set=a.292681615552917
I'm not an expert on cuisines, let alone mixing them, but your pick sounds like it could work fine. As for me and my family, chili con carne and tortillas often often appear on the table, the latter sometimes modified by adding some local fillings. If you ever visit Poland (or next time if you have already), I can strongly recommend trying almost every little bar/restaurant serving local dishes, especially if it's labelled as "bar mleczny"(milk bar). This eating places trace their roots from the communism times, back then providing a cheap food that didn't require meat, which distribution was very limited. Nowadays one can find there meals for all diets, including the "king of carnivore dishes", the local version of pork chop, along many kinds of salads. From personal experience I'll add these are pretty cheap and healthy. And for those feeling homesick while sightseeing in Kraków, have a coffee break at Massolit Books and Cafe (the addess is 4 Felicjanek st.), a lovely and climatic place serving wonderful hot drinks with plenty of magazines/books to read, where I headed for many years to have my extra English classes.
The first paragraph is so true and basically describes my family's outing in Ustka this June. On the first day we drove there and had a stroll down the harbour. The second day was about wandering on the beach, visiting the local sea lantern and few little museums, having fish from the Baltic Sea for dinner and spend the evening watching the USMC from nearby Redzikowo base prepare for night excercise offshore (plus a night of doing irresponsible stuff like climbing some unsupervised wrecks). But the last day was spend once again at the beach and in a museum of the Pomerania past WW2. We've also dined at the Mexican restaurant (although run by local Poles, but based on this newsletter's desires one could say they were mixing what's best from both cuisines and definitely drink menu) and set back home in the afternoon, arriving at almost midnight. From Ustka to our Kraków suburb it's over eight hours drive without jams and stops. When it comes to listening books on a journey, we've had eagerly followed the plot of mainly crime stories, historical fiction and memoirs by WW2 fighter pilot in exile, Bohdan Arct.
As for the pedestrian walkway: I think the one who destroyed it with a car poorly followed the example of the "iconic intoxicated car jumper" who five years ago in Rąbień (central Poland) made a legendary leap through a roundabout into the fenced local parish grounds. When I first learned of his action, I was glad no one else got hurt, but also laughed for a good while in disbelief, thinkin "HOW!!!". Here are the links to videos capturing this "internet hit" and providing some more details. Look for them in the second video's pinned comment. I'll only add that this year this person's driving ban has ended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_9SyQv4F4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aniguxnz9ik
You weren't kidding about the video! I have no doubt such a driver could take out a bridge.
That was wild!
Oh, those brown roadside signs. I hadn't thought of them in years. When I was a kid on family summer vacations, my dad would stop at every.single.brown.sign along the way. And, since my youngest brother KidK couldn't read yet or only in limited fashion, Dad read every.single.word very slowly so that KidK would, haha, understand. I do think my love of history comes from this, even though us older 3 kids began rolling our eyes and groaning when we saw a sign saying "historical marker ahead".
If in no hurry, I'd much rather take a vacation or a road trip on the back roads of our country. There are a lot of websites out there with all the roadside attractions and oddities to find . Our daughter and her husband took an Old Route 66 road trip not too long ago and stopped at anything that looked interesting. The lady in the gift shop next to the World's Largest Bulldozer told her she'd never seen anyone get so excited about a bulldozer than our daughter was. haha. Guess she is more like her Grandpa than we realized.
Our mounds were on Route 66! After the ketchup bottle and the Greek food, we returned to the interstate. Exploring was fun, but by the end, we were ready to get home.
The giant ketchup bottle sounded so interesting. What a disappointment!
I know! Seems like a hard concept to mess up.
The poor ketchup bottle was almost torn down a few years ago when the attached building went vacant. The City of Collinsville saved it, but does nothing else with it but raise funds occasionally to paint it. The City has rather fallen on hard times, so I guess trying to make something of the Ketchup Bottle is too much.
The scavenger hunt app reminded me of geocaching. I think it is still a thing. I don't know if your girls would be interested - Lord knows they have enough going on - but it might be a fun thing to try. It's easier now with gps on the phones. Back in the day we had to get Magellan gps devices. Here's a link to learn about it if you aren't already familiar.
Geocaching https://share.google/ISEJqzAp6ij8v6gPX
Sounds wonderful!
Random side quests can lead to grand adventures! I’m sure the girls will look back upon these family vacations with appreciation some day. I love the photo of the four of them sitting in a row contemplating the fountain in the distance - I wonder what they were thinking (besides “When are we heading home?”). I’m disappointed that the Jewel Box does not appear to live up to its name. But it’s off set by the world’s biggest ketchup bottle!
Filling up every second of vacation is the way to go. There's an app called makemydrivefun.com that might be good to try on your next road trip.
That sounds promising. I'll have to check it out.
The side quests we get into on trips. I've gone on my fair share of side quests while going around the mall.
<<The greenhouse was just a greenhouse. After about two minutes, we had seen it all. It was mainly a very fancy event space. >> THIS!!! With such a fancy name it should be grand, instead it's just where the rich people that don't want a huge wedding get married in St Louis. The greenery is all in pots so they can move it out for events.... And I am LOL about the Collinsville ketchup bottle. #Trudat Wish the museum at Cahokia Mounds had been open, it is really good. When my kids were little they loved the video and village inside, after they got older, they appreciated the artifacts.
We drove from Modesto, CA to Orlando, FL last April 2025. My husband is a Viet Nam Veteran and his group has a large reunion every Spring. Each year somewhere different. We enjoy eating our way to each destination we choose. We were going through Texas looking for a place to eat. So we used our auto navigation system which also gives you all the restaurants that are near where you are at. Huckleberry's came up and it was only eight miles off our route. So we thought that sounds really good. We followed the directions went into a tiny town, and there was a Huckleberry's, but it was a home store, which had gone out of business. So we backtracked to the highway, and were forced to go west instead of east, went another eight miles out of our way before we could reverse our course. So we went 32 miles out of our way and still had no place to eat. Of course we found something 10 miles up the road and were saved once again from starvation. This coming Spring the reunion is in Oklahoma City.