So much to say....so much to say: Operation Peirogi

To complete the weekend of ill advised cooking adventures, yesterday I attacked pirogi. This is a first for me in that while I'm an expert pirogi eater, I've never made them myself and haven't seen them made since I was in elementary school. So despite a distinct lack of hands on experience I ventured forth armed with my Grandma's recipe, a gray, cold Sunday and cleaning the house to procrastinate.

Mary Kukulka's Pierogi Recipe

The Recipe (yes this is a proper noun) was supplemented with some scattered verbal instructions (when in doubt double, better yet triple the butter) but also did a little Googling to fill in the gaps in the hopes of missing a few common pitfalls. This guy is way ramped up over his pirogi making as it is apparently very, very serious business. While he should probably cut back on his caffeine intake, there was helpful information buried amongst the passion.

There's all sorts of stuffing for these tasty little suckers and while I'm sure I will attempt the others at a later date, potato and cheese are favored by my fam so I went with those. The potato pirogi stuffing was made the night before per the practice of Grandma.

She always said that it was best to get it out of the way and after all the rolling, stuffing and boiling that was about to commence, she was right.

Thankfully I had become quite well acquainted with my mixer the day before because I ended up making three batches of pirogi dough.

Apparently one batch of potatoes requires a triple batch of dough - duly noted. And can I just say that there was nothing more I wanted this weekend than a KitchenAid mixer? I spent a decent amount of both Saturday and Sunday cursing my sister for not registering for one when she got married so that I could have borrowed it this weekend. Sigh...the girl just doesn't think ahead!

According to my Mom (hi Mama!) I showed a penchant for rolling out this dough as a 12 year old, so 25 years later I attacked it again. I mean, it can't possibly be as hard as making Grandmother's pie crust right? right?!? Right:

It isn't nearly so difficult as that stinkin' pie crust, maybe I'll try that one when Mama's here next week. Stay on the edges of your seats and keep a tight hold on those nipples, this is thrilling stuff.

Stuffing placed:

Sealed with water, finger pinchin' and then finished off for good measure with a fork:

Boiled:

and laid to rest:

Four and a half hours and four explosion casualties later I had 83 hand-made pirogi to gaze up on with glee. It sure looks pathetic for 4 1/2 hours worth or work. Then we ate them:

Not quite as good as Grandma's (as was expected) but a sight better than Mrs. T's if I do say so myself. Plus a whole load frozen for later consumption once the fam arrives.

This Christmas will be a lot of firsts for me It will be my first with Wes- yay! It will be the first one where I do not wake up with my parents in the same house - boo. It will also be the first one in over a decade that I won't be at my Grandma's house. My Grandma passed away this past summer, peacefully and without pain which is exactly what she deserved. I haven't found a way to write about her, it's hard to know what to say about a woman who I knew for my entire life but only a tiny portion of hers. I'm still working on that but what I do know is that of the things that are quintessentially Christmas to me, my Grandma's pirogi is a big one. My Grandma is not here this year and I think that I can speak for my whole family when I say that we miss her terribly. My Grandma is not here this year but the tradition of her pirogi 's (imperfect as they are) will be.