Today Poland and Germany celebrate the last Thursday of Carnival before Lent begins. Here in Poland the day is called Tłusty Czwartek while German friends call it Fetter Donnerstag. Before the time for Lent fasting will come we have this opportunity to feast and have fun. Then we’ll have to wait for more fun until Easter. I know some other countries like Italy, Spain and France have some similar events but they’re not as much rooted into a national tradition as here.
What’s the main goal of Fat Thursday? It’s simple. You don’t count callories that day and eat as many sweets, cakes as you wish. Everything is approved as most of those delicious food shall be avoided during Lent. On Fat Thursday families gather at home, friends meet in cafes and they eat cakes. The most popular in Poland are pączki (shown above left). Pączek is a traditional Polish donut filled with rose marmelade. Then we have faworki (shown right) – those are fried fingers made of French dough served with lots of powdered sugar. Don’t they look delicious?
Extreme sweet lovers can eat around 20 pączki that day. There are even competitions on who eats more. 2-3 pączki and some faworki is enough for me. Have a sweet Fat Thursday!
Chemist in the Bottle 
The rose marmalade donuts appeal to me! How lovely to eat all those yummy things without feeling guilty. It occurs to me that you can continue eating naughty things before Lent by travelling round the world – to Brazil for Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday!), and to the UK for Shrove Tuesday which is known as Pancake Day. The pancakes are traditionally served with lots of freshly squeezed lemon juice and sugar. Some villages have pancake races in which the competitors run along, flipping the pancakes in their frying pans while doing so (quite a lot of the pancakes end up on the ground). But your Polish cakes sound more appetizing!
x
They smell, look and taste delicious. Isn’t it great to have such a day in the year when you can eat as much sweets as you want you don’t have to think how much callories that was.
What an idea, to travel around the world from East to West and join all the foody celebrations!
Lucas – I am trying to diet right now. Your post is not making it any easier on me!!! Enjoy your feasting and have some cake for me!
Dieting is hard and painful thing, I know that. I will eat a pączek for you!
Sounds like a great idea to me. Paczki are wonderful. I imagine if you ate 20 it would take all of Lent to burn off the calories.
It’s such a funny day and everyone seems to be happy as well!
Oh, that’s so true. I think it could take longer than a Lent to burn them off.
I think Fat Thursday should be declared a statutory holiday around the world. Happy Fat Thursday and thank you for giving me a great excuse to eat pastry today 🙂
Wouldn’t that be great if everyone around the world had it and every country/region would celebrate with their best sweets.
You’re welcome, have a sweet day
All the bakeries around right now are stocking pączki, and my husband & I make it a tradition to hunt them down at this time of year. So far we’ve found pączki filled with Bavarian-style cream, chocolate, and redfruit jelly, but nothing as sumptuous as rose marmalade– that sounds miraculous, Lucas.
Great that you have pączki where you live too. Cream, chocolate or redfruit jelly filling is great but rose marmalade is the best. And in Greater Poland region where I live also a advocat/eggnog cream filling
After reading this, I decided to celebrate Fat Thursday by getting one of my favorite pastries, a rugelach at lunch. No matter that I am not Catholic and here in the US, I think people are more likely to celebrate Fat Tuesday – any excuse for a sweet treat is a good one!
I hope it was sweet and delicious! Sure, every excuse is good to have something sweet to eat, whenever, wherever you are.
Rugelah is my favorite pastry as well! I have absolutely no self-control when I find them in cafeteria (luckily, it doesn’t happen too often).
What is rugelah? I’ve never heard of such a pastry. Must be someting unique to where you live
It’s a Jewish pastry. You must have something similar with a slightly different name.
Now I’m hungry… 🙂
We have those here too but they’re not treated as Jewish pastry.
It’s interesting that everybody picked out pączki. For me faworki are much more appealing. Probably because we had a similar Ukrainian pastry – хворост (hvorost).
I hope you enjoyed the selebration. Areyou going to fast?
Pączki are the most famous here for Fat Thursday, faworki are next. Hvorost sounds nice, similar to chrust – we sometimes use this word (chrust) for faworki
I will eat less sweets at fast.
I have no comments. I am too hungry now. If you’ll excuse me, I need to see what caloric delights could possibly exist in this house. 😉 Nothing will obviously compare to those photos, so I’m bound to end up just frustrated. LOL. Please eat at least one extra of everything for me, Lucas. 😀
Ah, I just knew it pączki and faworki will be famous on Fat Thursday.
I’m reading this on Friday but let’s say half a pączek was for you!
Mmmm. Those treats sure sound and look delicious! I wish I had one of them in my mouth right now. LOL Hope you enjoyed Fat Thursdy!
It was one sweet and happy day
I didn’t even know about this Fat Thursday tradition! Good for me I did not take this to heart or I would still be paying for it. I should have indulged though since I ended up working off some calories — I shoveled snow and I think I will be sleeping very well tonight and waking up to feeling body parts I didn’t think I had 🙂
It’s well celebrated here. Your body needs some sugary callories from time to time.
Did you sleep well after shoveling?
Are those fried pieces of french dough similar to what we American call beignets?
I have no idea
Yum! I’m not sure what this says about me, but as soon as you said “extreme sweet lovers can eat around 20 a day” I immediately thought “I could totally do that” and wanted to try. 🙂 Thanks for sharing the tradition.
You think you could handle them all at once?
Those sounds delicious! I want them for Fat Tuesday AND Fat Thursday 🙂
Thank you for telling us more about Polish traditions! I dig any culture that appreciates the finer fried foods!
If you ever come to Poland I will treat you to some sweet goodies!
That is a deal!!! 🙂 Same goes for New York!
Fine 😀