Wow! Nothing says Thanksgiving like a
Sunday in October and a Polish feast.
…No?
On Tuesday this week, Stan and I made our
monthly marathon trek for supplies (Costco for human food, meat packing place
for 1000 pounds of dog meat {by which I mean meat for dogs…not meat from
dogs…}, restaurant supply store for more human food, Walmart for a dose of
sadness, etc). That is when I learned that the upcoming Sunday (yesterday) was
Thanksgiving!
“Thanksgiving on a Sunday?” I balked.
“Yes, unlike the Americans, we are
civilized and put our holidays on weekends instead of the middle of the week,”
Stan replied. Always a cheeky bugger, that guy.
“Now Stan,” I began, never to be outdone in
cheekiness, “Americans eat too much and watch football every Sunday. In order
for the holiday to be special, it had to be on another day. Not to mention the
alliteration-THursday, THanksgiving- makes it easier for us to remember.”
I apologize in advance for anyone who
interacts with me on a daily basis back in the States, because while I learned
the art of BSing from my dear father, I have been perfecting it living here
alone with Stan. I will surely be insufferable by the time I make it back to
the desert.
But after an excellent week of running our
A and B teams here at Miortuk, we felt we had a lot to be thankful for by
Sunday, but 2 people really don’t need a whole turkey, so I decided 100+
perogies and beet soup would suit us better. Every Good Friday, my Polish-ish
family turns the kitchen into a perogie making factory and we make hundreds
perogies for Easter: potato, sauerkraut, plum, spinach, chocolate cherry, you
name it (ok, we usually go a little kooky by the 10th hour in the
kitchen and you never know what you might find in the little semi-circle of
deliciousness).
I have never taken on such an endeavor on
my own, but I wanted to show Stan some of my family heritage…and make a dent in
the massive jar of sauerkraut, the 25 pound bag of beets and the 50 pound bags of potatoes and onions that somehow found their way into our truck during the supply run.
You know when you are shopping with a Pole when she looks at the 25 pound bag
of beets and goes, “welllll…I dunno…you think that is going to be enough???”
Let me walk you through some of the ins and outs of my Polish Thanksgiving yesterday in pictures. Some parts of the process were identical to how we do them at home, and some....well, I had to make some adjustments...
We always make the dough by hand at home too, but we have a handy dandy dough machine with a motor to flatten it into long, thin strips from which we cut the little circles. Well, no motorized dough machine here, just two arms and a rolling pin. Five batches of dough later, I felt like I had a lot of smiling grandparents in heaven. And like my arms were also made of noodle dough.
In a fancy niche cooking store, I bet you could buy a very expensive "perogie press" that promises perfect perogie circles. At home, the tool that has been handed down through the generations is a lid from an acient coffee percolator. It is exactly the right size and it has a good sharp metal edge to slice through our sheets of dough. Fresh out of percolators in the forest here, so I improvised with an old tzatziki container (no percolators, but they do have tzatiki...go figure)
Bring on the sauerkraut. I was quite happy that it tasted exactly the same as home! With the delicious melding of sautéed onions, mushroomsm, and of course, sauerkraut, just like at home, I also had a hard time keeping myself from just eating the whole bowl instead of putting it into the dough...
Also just like home, I ran into the classic Polish problem of "TOO DARN MANY POTATOES!" Even though this bowl was a fifth of the size that we make every year, I got half way through it and was ready to adopt some Jewish heritage and turn the rest into latkes! My mom always makes the potato filling with cheddar cheese and sautéed onions; we had no cheddar cheese here, but when in French Canada, eat like the French even when you are eating Polish by adding brie and goat cheese to your potatoes. Freaking delicious. These are probably the most multicultural potatoes ever...
Spinach filling managed to make it onto the menu here in Canada, even though it has only been included for a couple years at home. Pumpkin perogies can also tell pumpkin spice lattes to shove it, because they are far more delicious. Also, a severed hand.... 
Final count: 40 potato, 25 sauerkraut, 20 spinach, and 25 pumpkin.
We always make the dough by hand at home too, but we have a handy dandy dough machine with a motor to flatten it into long, thin strips from which we cut the little circles. Well, no motorized dough machine here, just two arms and a rolling pin. Five batches of dough later, I felt like I had a lot of smiling grandparents in heaven. And like my arms were also made of noodle dough.
In a fancy niche cooking store, I bet you could buy a very expensive "perogie press" that promises perfect perogie circles. At home, the tool that has been handed down through the generations is a lid from an acient coffee percolator. It is exactly the right size and it has a good sharp metal edge to slice through our sheets of dough. Fresh out of percolators in the forest here, so I improvised with an old tzatziki container (no percolators, but they do have tzatiki...go figure)
Bring on the sauerkraut. I was quite happy that it tasted exactly the same as home! With the delicious melding of sautéed onions, mushroomsm, and of course, sauerkraut, just like at home, I also had a hard time keeping myself from just eating the whole bowl instead of putting it into the dough...
Also just like home, I ran into the classic Polish problem of "TOO DARN MANY POTATOES!" Even though this bowl was a fifth of the size that we make every year, I got half way through it and was ready to adopt some Jewish heritage and turn the rest into latkes! My mom always makes the potato filling with cheddar cheese and sautéed onions; we had no cheddar cheese here, but when in French Canada, eat like the French even when you are eating Polish by adding brie and goat cheese to your potatoes. Freaking delicious. These are probably the most multicultural potatoes ever...
Final count: 40 potato, 25 sauerkraut, 20 spinach, and 25 pumpkin. 
Stan's nearly finished Polish feast. He made himself some German sausage as well because he is a voracious carnivore. I didn't mind of course because the only thing more Polish than a bowl of beet soup and a plate of perogies is kielbasa, and we all know the Germans probably copied the Polish when they started making sausage anyway....=D
Happy Canadianish Thanksgiving!
(a day late because I was too tired to write this thing yesterday...I can't imagine why =P)
For the honor and glory.
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