It’s Paczki Day in Downers Grove. In Poland, Paczki Day is the Thursday prior to Ash Wednesday; Poles in the U.S. celebrate it on Mardi Gras… Fat Tuesday… the day immediately preceding Ash Wednesday. I think it’s to ensure the global supply of fruit filling doesn’t deplete in one day.
Downers Grove is one of the Paczki hubs of the Chicago Suburbs because our bakery, while named for a Swede named Ingram, was purchased by Poles when it was discovered that Swedes, in fact, cannot bake. Well, they can’t bake anything without rye or seeds or crap like that. Anyway.
One must pre-order Paczki in order to be sure your flavor of choice will be available. Nothing causes more heartache than arriving at Ingram’s Busy Bee Bakery at 10 a.m. on Paczki day only to find nothing but prune and poppy seed paczki left. It’s sad, indeed.
The UberGirls and I arrived at 8:10 a.m. to pick up our order. Had we witnessed the mob scene at 6 or 7 a.m., when the train commuters descended upon the place, we’d have seen lines around the block. As it was, we saw armies of Paczki zombies marching down the sidewalk, white bakery boxes in hands or arms or being loaded into the back of a van.
We successfully bypassed the poor ignorant slobs who neglected to pre-order, pitying them as they filled out their order forms, only to groan and scratch out their choices as the horrifying announcements rang out: “Fresh strawberry is out.” “No more raspberry.” “Blueberry – gone.”
We picked up our pre-packed box of chocolate creams, strawberry and blueberry and headed home to wait for Aunt Jeanne to arrive. Long Live Paczkis. All Hail Paczkis.
