A February Favorite

SOUTH ZANESVILLE, Ohio – A local grocer honors a religious tradition by peddling a seasonal Polish pastry, pronounced punch keys.

Riesbeck’s Food Markets Co-President Brian Riesbeck talked about the traditional treat and how they’ve become a staple in his markets.

“It is Fat Tuesday coming up, so we are here to talk about Paczki,” Riesbeck said. “So you know Paczki Day is actually Tuesday, leading into Ash Wednesday and Lent. So we wanted to talk about our storemade Paczki and how we kind of got into the history of making them. We’ve been probably making them over around… probably about over 30 years. So we had a bakery director at the time who had Polish history or Polish descent and he came to us and talked to us about Paczki and we started to make them.”

Fat Tuesday, also known as Paczki Day in Poland, is a Catholic tradition that empties household pantries in preparation of the Lent seasonal fasting.

“It’s a fruit filled doughnut,” Riesbeck said. “We make many other fillings as well. There’s custard, a lot of fruit filled. But it is a… basically it’s a jelly filled doughnut, but a little better than a jelly filled doughnut. Ours are hand fried, produced. We make them from scratch, hand fry them and hand fill them every day.”

Riesbeck’s offers a variety of Paczkis with fillings ranging from fruits, puddings, creams and cheese. But they’re only available through Easter.