Poland - good food as the essence of home

Matylda (31, bartender, DJ) and Bartek (28, PR manager, ethnologist)

MARRYING FOOD

MATYLDA: I can remember the very begining of our relationship a couple of years ago. We went th theatre, we went to cinema and we ate out a lot. And then one they Dawid slept over and I was woken up by a really nice smell coming from the kitchen. As I got up and walk down the corridor, I saw Dawid preparing a very easily breakfast from classical ingredients coming from the shop downstairs. He made scrambled eggs with toasts and tomato salad. As the shop downstairs is not really well equiped, he didn't get olive oil and prepared everything on traditional Polish butter from the countryside they had. It was delicious. I guess things taste and smell better when the situation and/or the context of eating is indulging. I would state that this was the moment we went from a romance to the relationship. It's quite amazing what food can do to your heart. It really works!

DAWID: Oh, come on. It was just breakfast.

MATYLDA: Not exactly, it was both great, which means you can really cook and important because you made breakfast for the both us and we sat down together for a moment before leaving to work.

Matylda is cooking potato pacakes today:

COOKING TOGETHER

As it seems, a young food loving marriage spends at least an hour and a half in kitchen. They cook together, discuss today's and tommorow's menus, experiment and try more and more complicated recipes. From those discussions shoplists are born. Matylda and David take part in shopping together and they obviously enjoy it.

SHOPPING

This young couple choses shopping location on both peer recomendations and in internet discussions. Similarily to other young Exploring subjects, they are deeply immersed into Internet as a source for recipes and information for quality shopping. They often visit multiple weekend vegetable markets spread on the outskirts of Warsaw, taking a car together with some friends and considering it also as a weekend trip or adventure out of the noisy city.

BUTTER

Matylda and David construct long shopping lists but butter is not on that list as well as multiple other products that they buy almost everyday. They don't write down the brand names but seem to be loyal to different brands in different product categories. They purchase butter every couple of days, but use different brands for different occasions. Matylda uses Lurpak for baking and she seems not to acknowledge its usefulness for other purposes, although the choice is rather aim-oriented than than seasonal.

As many other Polish food-loving consumers this couple rejects margarine, stating its unhealthy and discrediting the "whole marketing-based health paranoia that led to margarine's domination" in the spreadable fats segment. They look both at top shelves and the lowest ones, as they seem to reject the middle shelves on a base of a "mainstream" precognition - they look for both downmarket traditional products that were not highly processed and exclusive premium ones coming from big brands.

They don't perceive butters as highly similar - Matylda differentiates tastes ("saltines"), consistency and texture. They keep butter in the fridge as they usually buy more than one pack. During breakfast and serving dishes that some people add butter to (i.e. some recipes for potatoes) they put butter on a special pre-war churn they bought on a Berlin flea market.

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS: For young couples cooking quality food and eating together strenghtens their anyway close and strong bond. People living and cooking together share their knowledge and therefore know a lot about food and its preparation. An opportunity might come from a well executed PR strategy.