April 9, 2012 - Dyngus Day

If you're Polish, or Polish-American, celebrate your heritage today (Easter Monday)!

If you're not, you can still enjoy the day!

The Dyngus Day tradition is for boys to sprinkle girls with water...so you might see boys with water pistols or even buckets, chasing after girls. It is increasingly popular for girls to sprinkle boys right back!

Enjoy all things Polish!

• To really celebrate Dyngus Day, turn on some polka music and dance!
  
  
• Eat kielbasa (Polish sausage) and pierogi (potato-cheese or sauerkraut dumplings) and kluski (unfilled dumplings).

• 
  Learn about pysanky, the art of decorating Easter eggs with wax and dark dyes. After enjoying this slide show, you can watch this how-to.

For more on Dyngus Day...visit the official website.

Also on this date:

Mickael Agricola Day in Finland

(A.K.A.) Finnish Language Day

Independence Day in Georgia 

October 8, 2011 - National Pierogi Day

There are a lot of ways to spell this Polish treat. There are a lot of flavors available, and there are a lot of ways to prepare them. Do yourself a big favor and try some today!

Pierogies are dumplings made of unleavened dough filled with potato or sweet potato, cheese, ground meat, fruit, or even sauerkraut. They can be boiled, baked, or fried. 

My favorite easy version is Mrs. T's potato-and-cheddar pierogies fried with onions in butter. They can be found in the frozen-foods section.

Homemade pierogies are also awesome, of course – but they're fairly difficult and time-consuming to make! You have to carefully roll out the dough, cut it into circles, put the right amount of filling inside one half, and then fold the dough over and crimp the edges. Here's a recipe if you want to try it! 

Similar foods have different names in different cultures. Ukrainians serve veraniki, for example, and people in Belarus serve kalduny. Turkish manti, Italian ravioli and tortellini, and Chinese wontons and pot stickers are all kinds of dumplings.

Find out more about Polish culture at DLTK's. 

Or try out these playground games from Poland.