When we first moved to Canada, I had never heard of perogies. There was this huge section for them in every frozen food section in all the grocery stores. It turns out Canada has a very large Ukrainian population and they have worked hard to keep their heritage alive. You should see Ukrainian dancing up here, it's amazing. We have been blessed with two sets of friends who are Canadian Ukrainians and they sure know how to celebrate the holidays. Their Christmas is 12 days after our traditional December 25th and if we work it right we can celebrate two or even three times. The foods are wonderful and really suited to our cold climate.
For those who don't know, perogies are little dough packages filled with potatoes and onions or cheese. You can boil them or fry them and then you add the toppings. You cook bacon and onions until they're golden brown and then add butter and sour cream. They are wonderful! There's other filling but these are my favorites. This is real comfort food, in fact my niece went through a time when all she wanted to eat was perogies. She was having a hard time finding them in the States but when she came up here for a visit I could see that she had all she wanted. We even have Ukrainian Fast Food at our malls!
There's also cabbage rolls, nalysnyky, little crepes, poppy seed cakes, lemony paska Easter breads, beet soup and lots of other things. In fact at Christmas it is traditional to have 12 different dishes. Each one has a meaning and it's a great feast. This year we celebrated with Barb and Lois. Since it's Barb's birthday today I decided to feature this cookbook and some of her food creations. The Ukrainians also do beautiful decorated Easter eggs, I've tried my hand at this and it's not easy. You use real bees wax that you melt over a candle and do lots of dipping in dye. You don't blow the egg out first and they can blow up if you don't do it right. Say Wendy, we should do a few this year! Anyway, the cookbook for today is #70 Ukrainian Daughters' Cookbook. Happy Birthday Barb!
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