Historical story

The glamor of the elite and the poverty of ordinary people eating bark and grass. Pre-war Poland without icing

A country devastated by war. Millions of families living in extreme poverty. Galloping prices and crooks preying on human harm. Discover the face of independent Poland, stripped of lies and myths. The Second Republic was also a battlefield, and the new front turned out to be kitchens, pantries and city markets.

Aleksandra Zaprutko-Janicka, author of the best-selling Occupation from the Kitchen , takes readers into times of shocking contrasts. He juxtaposes aristocratic banquets with the great crisis, forcing rural families to eat grass and bark. He writes about amazing technical progress that changed the lives of the housewives forever. But also about the emancipation of Polish women who did not want to be told any longer that they were to spend their whole lives in garach.

It shows the remarkable resourcefulness, economy and entrepreneurship of our great-grandmothers. He reveals the secrets of old gastronomy, explains what street food was 80 years ago and how women combined professional work with taking care of the home and children.

Twenty years from the kitchen it is something more than a book about the culinary history of our country. It is also a collection of still up-to-date advice and proof that the history of pre-war Poland does not belong only to men.