Monday, September 22, 2008

'Rog' Fest 2008

This past week was a doozy for my friends. Clair and Melissa's mom, Susan, died last Monday. This meant Matt lost his former mother-in-law. Some of you know that Matt was married once before to our friend, Melissa. The divorce was amicable and we're all good friends. Life is short, you know?

After the funeral on Friday, all the friends gathered at Melissa's house for some food and beverages. At some point, Jade proclaimed that we should make pierogis. The idea caught on with Melissa, and since I offered my expertise, it was decided that we would meet up at my house on Saturday afternoon for a pierogi party. I honestly didn't think it would happen since this was one of those late-night crazy drunk ideas. But..

At 3pm, I met Jade at Wegmans to commence with ingredient purchasing. The inclusion of Gatorade should give you a hint of how some of the group felt. Back at my house, I made a pitcher of sangria and started making the dough while we waited for Melissa and Clair to arrive.

At some point, I assessed the amount of farmer cheese filling that was left and how many pierogis we had already made and exclaimed,

"Oh god. Oh God!"

"What? What's wrong?" Jade asked.

"Nothing, really. I just realized we're following my Babcia's recipe for all of this. The recipe is for when we make pierogis for the entire family for Christmas Eve, so we make three kinds. At the end, we have about 300 pierogi. That means we might end up with 100 cheese pierogi all on their own, not including the other kinds we planned to make today," I explained, rubbing my head and getting flour all over myself.

Jade reflected, "Oh. Well, I guess we better call a few people to see who we can get over here to help us eat tonight!"

Melissa and Clair arrived soon after that to help with making the potato, cheese, and onion filled pierogi. They decided we should make this an annual tradition, calling it 'Rog Fest - the festival where everyone is Polish. And several hours later, we finally had used up all the dough and filling. Matt graciously fried up enough for dinner and the rest were parceled out on plates to take home. We figured we easily made over 100 pierogis.

It was a really fun time. Of course, it's easier to get a lot done when you have help! My mom was over-joyed when I told her of the festivities and could not wait to call my grandma to inform her that pierogi-making will live on in our family through me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent tradition. I haven't made perogies since I was little and we did the same thing for Christmas Eve dinner. Recently, I found my mom's perogi recipe. You can bet that I will be making them some time soon. Store bought just aren't as fun.

battlemaiden said...

They look so good in the photos. Now you've got me thinking about it, too. Is it a SECRET family recipe or one you'll share with us, perhaps via a blog post?

Julia said...

You need to go back and click on the linked text that says "Babcia's recipe" within the post because that takes you to the post that has the recipe (scroll down past the pictures).

battlemaiden said...

Duh.

Pamela said...

I was just going to ask about a recipe, but then I read the comments. Thanks for taking a 'duh' for the team, battlemaiden. You're a rock star.

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