Being Polish

Okay, this has nothing to do with Hexums, this time. This is about Being Mankus. My husband does not believe in letting any food go to waste, ever. Several years ago, we had a power outage. After it was restored in the house, we didn't realize that it didn't come back on in our garage, and our freezer out there was thawing. After we caught the problem, I started chucking food. Oh, no, John wasn't having any of that. There were several tubes of venison summer sausage in the freezer. They were already freezer burned, and now this. If you cut the tube in half and looked straight at the cut end, it looked like a doughnut shape. The outer ring was dried out and gray, the small inner circle was still pink like sausage should be. Yep, John ate it.

Years ago, my mom was at my house and was watching John take leftovers out of the fridge and eat them cold. Mom just about had a fit, asking me what kind of new wife I was to not bother heating up food for my husband. For Pete's sake, I had a microwave, it's not that hard to take good care of a husband! I told her just try to go wrestle the food from John and heat it for him. She did. He won. He'll take cold, hard, leftover rice and eat it with cold, congealed gravy for lunch at work. Ewww....

We don't throw old leftovers away. John eats them. If you go to bed, and wake up in the morning and realize the food got left out overnight, you don't throw it away. John eats it. The only time you can toss food is if there's a three-foot beard of mold on it. And that's got to be covering all of it. Sometimes mold can be cut away to eat what's underneath...

Anyway, you get the picture. John's oft' quoted explanation for this gastrointestinal fortitude is, "I'm Polish." (By the way, the man drinks a lot of Blackberry Brandy for stomach issues, so I'm not really sure how well the Polish is working.) So, the point of all of this is, one day, Hanna comes bursting into our presence in tears and said, "How come you never told me 'Polish' means that you come from Poland?" John and I look at each other and think, to ourselves and each other, "WHAT? What do you mean?" "One day, I asked you what 'Polish' meant, and you said that it meant you can eat anything without getting sick. Why didn't you tell me Poland was a COUNTRY?!!" She held a huge grudge about this for months. We didn't mean to keep her true heritage away from her..... Apparently knowing your roots are in Poland is far more important than knowing your dad can eat anything without getting sick.