Polish Food Rocks!

It's been a long day of preparing for the next four days. I have nearly non-stop meetings for the rest of the week and after meetings this morning, I savored a slower afternoon today. I am presenting three separate things at our Senior Leadership meeting tomorrow morning. I'm trying to carve a niche for myself while polishing my organizational and leadership skills. Game on, man! Game on!

Anyway, I had a fabulous weekend. My folks, brothers, and Jack came up to Chicagoland to visit ME! I was grateful to not have to drive (which is, in itself, a break!). On Friday night, Jack and I walked to a cute little sports bar around the corner from my house and watched the Cubs game. Then we walked to our parish's festival, which had a killer live band and massive beer tent (along with rides and games that seriously rivaled the 4-H fair).

Then on Saturday, my folks and brothers arrived and we drove over to Whiting, IN to visit the Pierogi festival. Yes, they dedicate a whole festival to Pierogi's and it's spotlighted all over The Food Network. The pierogi were fantastic. Not what we're used to in old-school South Bend, but still good. They were stuffed with meat, cheese, potato, onion, apricot, blueberry, or even mushrooms. In addition to eating pierogi, stuffed cabbage, kielbasa, and noodles & cabbage, we reveled in our Polish heritage. We drank frothy root beer, laughed at t-shirts that mock Tommy Hilfiger (they said Tommy Kowalski), giggled at other t-shirts that said "Nice Pierogis" across the chest, we bought ornaments shaped like little pierogi, and I even bought a couple strands of Polish mardi gras beads. Jack discovered "kebabs" while Zibby gnawed on a turkey leg and Brady ingested a substantial amount of ice cream.

So after we tired of the festival, we walked down to the lakeshore, which was only about three blocks away. After that, we took everyone on a tour of both St. Fozzie's campuses so they could get a visual of where I work. After that, we took them to Aurelio's to experience the best in Chicago's thin crust pizzas.

Basically, we ate all weekend! I might be needing that arterial roto-rooter after all! Think we can get a group rate?!