EAST LONGMEADOW, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) -- Lent is almost here, which for some means there’s just over a week left to indulge in your guilty pleasures. Those in western Mass will be practicing self-discipline and giving up a luxury for 40 days. One popular thing to give up is sweets, so we traveled to Big Y in East Longmeadow to try a polish delicacy that’s steeped in tradition: the paczki.

We spoke with their Bakery Sales Manager, Mary Jane Kopie, who tells us, “It’s a Polish tradition that they would gather up all of their lard and butter before the Lenten season, and they would indulge in the pastries right before Lent.”

Although paczkis are sweet and come in different flavors, they are not to be confused with a doughnut from Dunkin. “The dough is a little bit different. It’s a little bit richer. It’s loaded with butter, eggs, extra fillings,” Kopie explains. “They’re very sweet. You can have apple, Bavarian, you have prune, Boston cream... They’re sweet little delicacies.”

These sweet delicacies are so popular that the chefs at the bakery come in every morning making paczkis from scratch all the way to Fat Tuesday.

Kopie tells us, “Our baker’s coming early. From start to beginning, it’s probably about four hours...We started selling those on January 7th. It’s like the week into, the week after New Year’s.”

To get the whole store involved in the indulgence, every department picked one member to participate in a paczki eating contest with the winner coming from an unlikely group, “One of the kids in deli ate Eight and a half in five minutes.”

We don’t recommend indulging to that extent but do check out your local bakery to try a little something sweet packed with a whole lot of tradition before Ash Wednesday.

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