On the Appetite Trail

Abstract

The article recounts actions oriented at experiencing and reliving culinary traditions, undertaken by the Local Action Group of the “Mroga” Society for the Local Community Development. The Society operates in five communes: Koluszki, Brzeziny, Dmosin, Jeżów and Rogów, located in the north-eastern part of the current Łódź voivodeship, east of the city of Łódź. In the past, this area, which bordered regions whose characteristic features indicated their distinct regional identities (the Łęczyca Land and the Łowicz Principality from the north, the Rawa Land from the east, the Opoczno and Piotrków Lands from the south, and Łódź from the west), was devoid of definite features typical to folk culture. Currently it is still an area which, due to the absence of a consistent and enduring cultural foundation to refer to, cannot be described in the categories of an ethnographic or geographic region. By following the tourist trail laid by the Society, known as the “Appetite Trail”, I reconstruct the vision of what the community resident in the five communes covered by the activity of the “Mroga” Local Action Group defines as the region’s culinary tradition, and I deconstruct the Group’s actions that reduce the tradition to the level of a tourist attraction.