God gave me 108 years on this earth. I’ve seen war, I’ve seen lines for bread, I’ve seen ration cards, empty shops, cold kitchens, and people who could make a dinner out of nothing. And now I watch people afraid of a plain egg while they trust a powder from a commercial. Greed and nonsense have always been around, but when it comes to food, sometimes a person’s hands just drop in despair.
My name is Zofia. I didn’t come here to argue with doctors. Don’t throw away your medicine because of an old woman on the internet, that would be real foolishness. But I will tell you what life taught me.
A person was not built from a box, not from a candy bar, not from a colorful yogurt that has more writing than actual food. Not from pills that promise everything, just so you buy another package. A person is made from the earth, from water, from milk, from eggs, from cabbage from the cellar, from bread cut carefully so no crumb goes to waste. I have seven foods I ate my whole life.
Unfashionable, cheap, nothing that requires knowing a foreign language to read the label. Just ordinary. And maybe that’s exactly why they served people well. The first is coffee.
Yes, coffee. Someone will say, “Mrs. Zofia, coffee is harmful, coffee raises your blood pressure, coffee irritates. ” What irritates me more is a person turning on the TV in the morning and listening to what they should fear.
I drank coffee since my youth, sometimes black, sometimes grain coffee because the real one wasn’t available. Sometimes so weak that the cup had more character than the coffee itself. But in the morning, there was a cup, and it wasn’t about the coffee at all. It was about the moment.
Sitting down, warming your hands, looking out the window, not starting the day with screaming. Just please, don’t turn coffee into a dessert. Not half a glass of sugar, not sweet syrups, not creamer that sits on the shelf for six months and still pretends to be fresh. Coffee should be coffee.
Bitter. Life can be bitter too, and yet people drink it. The second thing is berries from the bush. Blueberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, chokeberries.
In our house, nobody said it was some superfood. People said, “Go pick, because winter won’t feed itself. ” When I was a girl, my hands were dark blue from blueberries. My mother looked at my dress and shook her head, but then she made juice.
Sour, dark, real. In winter, that juice was like summer in a spoon. Today everything has to be sweet like a promise before elections. But I tell you, sour is needed too.
Not everything good has to stick to your teeth. The color in a fruit is not decoration, it’s a sign that something is there. I don’t know all the fancy names, but I know that after a handful of blueberries, a person feels different than after a third cookie. That’s enough for me.
The third thing is fish. Not salmon from a commercial, because in my day a person might have seen salmon only in a picture of the sea. For us it was herring, mackerel, sardines from a can. Fish on Friday, fish for Christmas Eve, fish when the wallet was thin and a home still needed feeding.
My Janek used to say, “Zosia, sardines are a poor man’s dinner. ” And I told him, a poor dinner but a smart one, because after good fish your head doesn’t get heavy. You don’t have to lie down like after a bowl of greasy sauce. I’m not telling you to eat fish every day.
No. But having herring, mackerel, or sardines at home is not shame, it’s common sense. Shame is buying fish sticks where you need a magnifying glass to find the fish and pretending it’s the same thing. The fourth thing is eggs.
Oh, people got so scared of eggs. One day they’re allowed, next day they’re not. One day the yolk is guilty, next day the white is holy. And the hen just kept laying eggs, she never read the newspapers.
In our house, an egg was a lifesaver. A hungry child? Soft-boiled egg. No meat?
Fried egg. A person weak after illness? Egg broth. Simple things.
I’m not going to tell you to eat two a day or three a day, this many or that many. That’s not my business. But I will say one thing: don’t be afraid of food just because someone once turned it into a scarecrow. First look at what you actually put next to that egg.
Because often it wasn’t the egg that hurt anyone, it was the mountain of mayonnaise, the white bread, and sitting all day without moving. The fifth thing is meat. Now some people will make a face, but I’m not talking about sausages from a package. I’m not talking about kielbasa that smells more like a factory than smoke.
I’m talking about a piece of real meat, about broth made from bones, about liver with onions, about beef like it used to be, about meat a person ate with respect, not every day like a king. Back then, when there was meat, it was a special day. Nothing was thrown away. Bones made soup.
Leftovers made filling. Fat made cracklings for porridge, and a person had strength. Not because some powder is magic, but because real food gives the body something concrete. An old person’s body doesn’t live on lettuce leaves alone.
Don’t tell me old age is supposed to be hungry and obedient. Old age needs strength, just with a head on its shoulders. Without gluttony, because gluttony is not tradition, it’s a lack of sense. The sixth thing is pickles.
Pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, beetroot sourdough, buttermilk, kefir. Today they say fermented. We said, go down to the cellar and that’s it. In the cellar, jars stood like soldiers.
Cabbage for winter, cucumbers for dinner, sourdough when a person was pale and lifeless. This was food that was alive. Not dead, not smoothed out, not the same thing sitting on a shelf for half a year. Alive, sour, real.
Just remember, pickles have salt. If someone has high blood pressure, don’t play hero and eat half a jar at once. Wisdom is not about eating a healthy thing stupidly. Wisdom is knowing when to stop.
The seventh thing, and this is my little thing, is flaxseed. It doesn’t look pretty, doesn’t smell beautiful, has nothing from an advertisement. When you soak it, it gets strange. Children would wrinkle their noses, and my grandmother said, “Not everything that helps has to taste like candy.
” She was right. Flaxseed was for the stomach, for calming the inside, added to cottage cheese, to oatmeal, sometimes to a cup of warm water. A little seed, but stubborn. Like old women.
Nobody pays attention to it, and it just does its work. So there you have it. Coffee, berries from the bush, fish, eggs, real meat, pickles, flaxseed. Seven things.
Not from television, not from a colorful box, not from a lady in a commercial who is thirty years old and tells me how to age. These are things from home, from poverty, from common sense, from the cellar, from the pot, from the forest, from the field. But listen to me now, and this is more important than the whole list. Food alone won’t save a person.
Food is fuel, and the engine is here, inside. You can eat the best things. But if you carry anger inside you for thirty years, it will eat you faster than a weak dinner. You can drink coffee black as night, eat fish and pickles, but if you have no reason to get up in the morning, your body will start to fade too.
You need someone, or at least something. A garden bed, a cat, neighbors to feed, a rosary, a phone to call your grandson, a window to look through and check if the world is still standing. I lost many people. My Janek, my sister, the friend I drank tea with until her hands shook so badly she was afraid to hold a glass.
And I’ll tell you the truth. In old age, the worst thing isn’t the wrinkles, not the knee, not getting up slower. The worst thing is the silence. That silence when nobody asks anymore if they should pour a second cup.
So eat simply, but also live simply. Don’t put off a kind word for later. Don’t hold a grudge your whole life, because life is shorter than people think, even when it lasts 108 years. Now I’ve talked enough.
Write to me and tell me what was always on your table at home. Because sometimes in one old dish there is more truth than in an entire commercial.