“For breakfast , there were always barszcz, beet soup with rye bread. If a farmer had enough potatoes, then they were the second course, fried or boiled with salt. If there was not much bread, potatoes replaced bread with soup.
The midday meal usually consisted of two dishes of which the first was always cabbage sprinkled with kasha, and the second, buckwheat or barley kasha with milk or fried. For a change, the second dish might be kluski, like large fingers of coarse rye or wheat flour ground at home with hand-mills, served either with milk of fried; or sometimes pierogi with cheese, and in Lent, with oil cake.
The evening meal was similar to breakfast.
It was customary for everyone in the house to sit and eat together at breakfast, lunch or dinner: the farmer, children, and servants. They ate from one dish that was placed on a bench, stool or tree stump in the middle of the room, and everyone surrounded it. The older folks usually sat, and the younger people stood. Only the housewives did not eat with the others, because they were constantly adding food to the dish.
Coffee, tea, sugar, rice, raisins, almonds, oranges and lemons, available today in every store were unknown in the village back then. If coffee and tea were used, it was only for the major holidays, Christmas and Easter.”
From “Memoirs of a Peasant” by Jan Słomka (1842-1932) by William F. Hoffman, pgs. 36, 37.
Poland's Peasant Heritage 
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