Despite\u00c2\u00a0the fact that my maternal grandmother and her ancestors lived in Lithuania, my ancestry is 100% Polish. Even so, my family celebrated very\u00c2\u00a0few Polish traditions at Christmas.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, during the Christmas holidays we visited\u00c2\u00a0traditionally visited several relatives and shared holiday meals with them, the most memorable of which were the meals at my Grandmother Danko’s home.<\/p>\n
Grandmother Danko did very little cooking herself, but my Aunt Helen would prepare the holiday meal at Grandmother’s house. Aunt Helen\u00c2\u00a0spent days cooking, preparing pierogi (dumplings) and go\u0142\u0105bki (stuffed cabbage, literally “little pigeons”) from scratch, and making sure there was enough szynka (ham), kie\u0142basa (sausage), kapusta (cabbage), ziemniaki (potatoes), buraki (beets) bu\u0142ki (rolls),\u00a0ch\u0142eb (bread), and\u00c2\u00a0mas\u0142o (butter) to go around.<\/p>\n
For my sisters and me, the best\u00c2\u00a0part of the holiday meal\u00c2\u00a0were the pierogi. Oh, how we loved pierogi! We could have eaten pierogi with every meal. We still could.<\/p>\n
Aunt Helen made\u00c2\u00a0three kinds of pierogi: potato and cheese, sauerkraut, and cheese,\u00a0but I only remember her making the cheese pierogi once. A few years ago, I asked\u00c2\u00a0her for\u00c2\u00a0the recipe. Like my mother’s recipes,\u00a0Aunt Helen’s recipes resided only\u00c2\u00a0in her head. Nothing was written down. In fact, nothing really had precisely measured ingredients. Aunt Helen’s recipe for pierogi dough was\u00c2\u00a0something like, “add water to the dough\u00c2\u00a0until the consistency is right”.<\/p>\n
Even then, I’m not sure Aunt Helen gave me all\u00c2\u00a0her secrets\u00c2\u00a0for making pierogi. I’ve made pierogi several times, but they don’t taste quite the same. I don’t make pierogi very often because their preparation is very time and labor intensive. But, maybe this Christmas…<\/p>\n
Written for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories<\/a> – Day 3.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2007 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nonetheless, during the Christmas holidays we visited traditionally visited several relatives and shared holiday meals with them, the most memorable of which were the meals at my Grandmother Danko’s home. Continue reading