For many years, I've been involved with ethnographic pottery. Since 2021, at a museum founded in Piscu – a former potters' village near the capital. Here, pots and/or their stories are collected.
One summer day, Nicolae Rogoz visited us, bringing a pot to show us. We would get to know each other better, also at the museum, but at a first meeting, his name already sounded like heritage. His pot was inherited in the family, from his great-great-grandfather Lazăr. A pot sacredly preserved, from generation to generation. His great-great-grandfather, he tells me, represented his village, Tulgheș, at the Great Union of Alba Iulia. Each community representative was greeted with such a pot full of sarmale with păsat, adorned with a tricolor ribbon.
The sarmale with păsat thus passed from the festive table, from which the entire assembly at Alba Iulia partook. I inquired a bit about this "păsat". In Piscu, I had heard of it; the elders remembered it as a very pleasant culinary memory, a kind of porridge made from coarsely ground corn, which women cooked sweet or savory, in water or milk. Here are some beautiful sayings preserved in DEX, from the time when păsat was commonplace:
· To flow (or to fall, to drop etc.) (to someone) milk (or honey) into the păsat = for things to go well (for someone); to succeed in everything.
· To pour (or to pour) (to someone) milk into the păsat = to do someone a good turn.
· To be milk with păsat or to be sweet păsat = to be a good and pleasant thing (of great use to someone).
As for the pot, its simplicity is full of nobility, probably a rushed order, as there was no time to add color or adornments.
How many such pots are still preserved among the descendants of the former leading peasants? A pot that holds, in place of the sarmale with păsat, the memory of a monumental day for Romania and the great emotion of one of the thousands of parts of the nation's heart. With love for Romania, we wish you to succeed in igniting in your hearts the warmth of that first winter day, the first Day of the Country!
Adriana Scripcariu