Living in Warsaw in this transitional period poses some challenges. There are no supermarkets, so to survive in the crush of open-air market shopping Sabrina’s grasp of weights and measures in Polish and her mental arithmetic with the zero-laden currency exchange rate, have become quite respectable pretty quickly.
Meters in taxi cabs have a specially extended ‘window’ to deal with the number of zeros in the Złoty and the digits spin so fast en route that it’s like watching a slot machine. Then there’s the eye test on dark evenings of trying to figure out which banknote to pay the fare with!
Even life and property are threatened. My driver, and the security guards at our office all have side arms in case of hold ups, but it is the expatriate wives in their imported luxury cars with their dead-giveaway foreign number plates, that are the softest of soft targets for every thief and hoodlum around, (or so they thought, until they met the indomitable and fearless Sabrina).
Cars are frequently stolen to order and driven across the Belarus or Lithuanian border where they are sold to the highest bidder, or driven on to St Petersburg or Moscow. Our way-too-fancy Land Rover Discovery, with its German number plates was recently nabbed by an enterprising thief who hid behind a hedge near our house, jumped in the car whilst Sabrina was opening the gate and then set off with her handbag still on the front passenger seat. She was having none of this. Grabbing the miscreant by the throat through the car’s open window, she gamely hung on as the car drove away. After first trying and failing to brush her off by sideswiping her on our garden hedge, he accelerated away. Inevitably her little legs (Sabrina is only 5’ 2”), could no longer keep up and she had to let go, escaping with a few very nasty bruises and a livid gash on her elbow for her efforts. Thankfully, our two year old daughter was at home with the babysitter, not in her car seat in the back.
The local police took our statement down at the station, but warned us that recovering the car was a remote possibility at best, unless of course we wanted to post a substantial cash reward with them for its return. Jacek, our language interpreter from the office, strongly advised against this, warning that the officers were more than likely in on the heist. In the next few weeks we were able to follow our thief’s progress on our credit card bills, as he wended his way gradually to Chechnya after a brief detour to the French Riviera. Whichever side he was on in Chechnya’s conflict against Russia, I can only imagine that the new owner made far better use of our vehicle’s off-road capabilities than we ever would have.
This has not been our only vehicular drama. A few months later, Sabrina was walking back to our newly leased Volvo from vegetable shopping at our local open-air market. Confronted by two fearsomely large men sporting buzz cuts and wearing ill-fitting nylon tracksuits, who were trying to break into it, she stood her ground and began shouting abuse at them in English. They shouted back equally loudly in Polish or Russian (in the heat of the moment it can be hard to tell which of these similar sounding languages is which). Soon a crowd of inquisitive shoppers and stallholders gathered to watch this fearless, diminutive foreigner, who by then had removed a large cabbage from her shopping bag and was threatening to throw it at the miscreants. Fortunately they found this behaviour so strange and hilarious that they stopped what they were doing and walked away!
Sabrina can’t remember if this heroic cabbage ended up in Polish-style Cabbage Rolls she made that evening, but it’s more than likely!
Polish-style Cabbage Rolls: Serves Eight
1 whole green cabbage, leaves removed, blanched in boiling water until pliable (you may not need all the leaves).
1 lb. ground turkey
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic
8 oz mushrooms, roughly chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
E V olive oil
2 cans crushed tomatoes
1 large pinch of dried basil
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Place the mushrooms, onions, garlic and carrots in a food processor, pulse until finely chopped but not puréed. Place the mushroom mixture in a large bowl along with the ground turkey, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix until thoroughly combined. Lay the a cabbage leaf with the rib side opposite you and put 2 to 3 tablespoons of the turkey mixture on the leaf about 2 inches away from the bottom edge, fold up that edge and then fold the sides over, then roll up to the rib, finish using up the turkey and cabbage leaves in the same way. Place neatly in an oven safe casserole (you will have two layers). Pour the crushed tomatoes over the cabbage rolls then the basil and a splash of olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Put in the oven for 1 hour.
The moral of this excellent story is: Don’t mess with Sabrina.
I am now well warned never to get into a cabbage fight with Sabrina. However, I will gladly partake of the cabbage rolls.