I'm no great joke teller, but there's a classic Polish joke in our experience this past weekend trying to find the Polish Festival in Roseville. Whoever drew the map for the event ad was seriously living up to the Polish cliche of the dullest penny in the pond. But after several wrong turns, walking around old Roseville, and finding another event (the One Root Festival), we finally wised up and asked a postman, who pointed us in the right direction. When we finally found the Polish-American Club, it was apparent from the loud polka music that we were in the right place.

The ad claimed authentic food and folk dancing, along with a Polish butcher(!). We never found out what that meant, but $10 got us a large plate of kielbasa, pierogis, stuffed cabbage (golumpki), cucumber salad, and rye bread with butter. This isn't diet fare, but with the enthusiastic dancing we saw, it seems like you might need a bit of fat to keep you polka-ing. There were also potato pancakes (placki), which ran out quickly, Polish beer, and pastries like filled doughnuts (paczki) and crusciki, a fried dough coated in powdered sugar. (Go here to learn more about Polish cuisine.)

The best part, though, was the collection of polka CDs that had been donated by someone. They were selling for $5 each, to benefit the Scouts, and really, who can resist a polka CD? We picked up two by the excellent Texas group Brave Combo, and a classic "best of" by the Polka King himself, Frank Yankovic. You haven't lived 'til you've heard his rendition of "Who Stole the Kishka?", sung with the apparently unrelated "Weird" Al Yankovic. I added it to my growing collection of food music immediately.

So except for the disappointment of missing the Polish butcher (and I'm really curious about what he would do there), we learned a lot about Polish history from the very nice booklet that was handed out. And we got to eat Polish food, which you don't find a lot of in California, Poles not being widely known for their fine cuisine. But the next time you hear a polka, you'd be foolish not to have a beer in one hand and a juicy kielbasa in the other.