Pierogi Day

Yesterday was pierogi day and I do love a good pierogi day. I've posted about pierogi making but I don't think I ever wrote about the origins of the day. Every year, Christmas Eve is at my wife's Aunt Carol's house. There is an absurd amount of food, a lot of fun and games including a holiday themed bingo game with bingo card that date back to the 90s. One of the main foods besides the shrimp and ham are a ton of pierogi.

Well, after I officially married into the family in 2000, being the food nut that I am, I asked for a pierogi making lesson. We picked a day and my wife and I went over to make that year's holiday pierogi. Well, it turns out that I'm pretty good at rolling them out and my wife is pretty good at filling them. The four us (Uncle Lou was there too) started at about 8 in the morning and were done before noon. Aunt Carol was stunned. Normally this was just the two of them cooking which means Aunt Carol doing just about everything and then Uncle Lou boils the pierogi. They used to start at like 7 in the morning and finish around dinner time, sore and cranky with their basement kitchen trashed, and barely on speaking terms.

So from there, we started coming over to make the annual Christmas pierogi. And then my brother in law and sister in law moved back home from North Carolina and the party grew. And then the kids started coming and the event grew even bigger. Aunt Carol has written records for the most pierogi out of one batch of dough and she keeps track of how many we make each year. The number fluctuates with how stuffed they get but also, the blocks of farmer's cheese used to come in all sizes, it's just a straight 3 pound block now. Many hands makes it go quick. They get stuffed almost as fast as the circles get cut, the next batch of dough is usually ready to go before it is needed, and two pots of water are boiling them as they get made. We usually start a little after 10 and are done making pierogi about 2 hours later.

Two years ago, my nephew took an interest in rolling out the dough and cutting the circles. Last year, for the first time in a long time, there was no pierogi making party. Carol and Lou made a batch and delivered them on Christmas eve to all the families that would have normally been at their house. This year, I brought a bench scraper and my nephew was even more into it. I think my job as official Dough Roller may be in jeopardy. Official Dough Roller Supervisor is probably a pretty good gig.

Summer in February

Winters can seem to drag on and seem endless. To get through it, we have an annual Summer in February picnic. It's a summer family barbecue in the middle of winter. Groundhog's Day has nothing on this. You ever have a Thanksgiving style food induced coma on Groundhog's Day? Didn't think so.

The tradition started a few years ago when we gathered at a camp on the Sacandaga for a pot-luck picnic and a bunch of outdoor winter fun. The food kept getting better and the event quickly picked up an alias, Pierogie and Rib Day.

Other than a little of the coordination, my contributions to the meal are the ribs and sausage. I've got a burn barrel for making charcoal. At some point in this barrels history, it was a 55 gallon drum of tomato paste. With a few modifications, this thing has been generating charcoal for barbecue for over 10 years. You cut a small door towards the bottom. This is where you shovel out the coals and control how much air the fire gets. You drill holes so you can make a grate of rebar above the door. My grate is by the lower barrel rib. The grate supports the burning logs and allows coal sized pieces to fall to the bottom. Once you're done cutting and drilling, you basically have a giant charcoal chimney.

Start a fire an you are off to the races. With the door at the bottom open, you can turn this into a jet engine. With is closed, you have a more controlled, slow burn. Although this year, I got smart and used a bunch of coals from the wood stove to heat the pit. Usually, I have to make two fires.

The pit is just a stack of old concrete blocks. In the summer, I just put the colas on the ground. You can't do that in the winter. The coals thaw the frozen ground then water comes out of the once frozen ground and puts out your fire. Ask me how I know. The work around is some bricks and an old cast iron grate just above the ground.

 I cooked two rack of ribs and a few pounds of sausage in there. Instead of the usual rub, I went with one recommended by Mr. Dave. Here's a link to the recipe. As to be expected from a Mr. Dave recommendation, the rub is great. My wife's uncle took the extra rub I had home with him.

Off to one side of the pit was a slope my father-in-law set up for the kids. They had fun with it. Here's my nephew on a sledding run.

Once the food started, it never seemed to stop. There was a big taco dip with chips. On paper, I shouldn't like taco dip, but I love it.

I threw together a Buffalo cheese dip. Not bad. It's one of those things that isn't fantastic but for some reason you can't stop eating it.

 Aunt Carol fried up a ton of pierogi. There are only 9 in the pan...she fried up a lot more than 9.

My mother-in-law makes some seriously good deviled eggs. Her potato salad is great too.

Now that's a lot of pierogi. The ribs came out tender and the combination of smoke with the rub wa delicious.

Here's Round 1 for me.

Hope you left room for dessert. In addition to ice cream, there were lots of cookies - some gluten free thin mints that really tasted a lot like the real thing, chocolate cherry cookies and kissing hands. Plus an apple square and a chocolate rum cake.

After the kids went to bed, there was a loud, highly contested six-handed pinochle game that went until 1 AM. Just like in the summer.

Pierogie Day 2012

The annual tradition continued and we all gathered at Aunt Carol and Uncle Lou's house this morning to make pierogies for Christmas Eve. Once a big bowl of filling is prepared, Aunt Carol makes the dough. I roll it out and cut it circles. Amy, Lisa and Amanda fill them. Eric boils them. And Lou enjoys supervising. The kids only had a partial interest in the process this year and instead played with every toy in the house. When the dust cleared, there were 127 pierogie made in about 90 minutes.

 

Toxic Friends and Other Holiday Adventures

Toxic Friends are the best and every New Years we head south to Maryland to see ours. When you are with a Toxic Friend, you eat too much, drink too much and have nothing but fun. Even when the kids are crabby. But before we traveled south for New Years, there was Christmas. The holiday gluttony started Christmas Eve at Aunt Carol's and Uncle Lou's house. A good portion of these perogies were fried up and were basically served "All you can eat" style with a complete ham dinner and a bottomless bowl of shrimp cocktail.

That's what I'm talkin' about...

After Christmas, we had one night at the house before we loaded up and headed to Connecticut to surprise my mother with a late birthday party. She was quite surprised to see everyone show up randomly at the Trader Joe's she frequents. I don't have any photos of the surprise dinner, but it was a unique pot luck smorgasbord of Trader Joe's items we picked up while we were there.


The next morning we set off for Maryland to visit Toxic Friends Joe and Adrienne and their kids Olivia and Nate. We arrived on Thursday the 29th and I was actually kind of hungry for dinner. We got take out from a place called Habib's. The store is part coffee shop with store made bagels and kabob joint with the most amazing tandoori bread. Approximately 5:00 PM on that Thursday was the last time I felt hungry until earlier today (the 3rd). Granted, the lack of hunger did not stop me from eating. The biggest feast of the weekend was the New Year's Eve dinner. The first stop was at a Cosco.

I have always like BJ's, but now I have been to a Costco. I have shopped in a Costco. BJ's, you're no Costco. You can get fresh buffalo milk mozzarella in there and lots of organic stuff. The selection of gadgets electronics, and bulk household type stuff is better too.

From Costco, we went to Frank's Seafood. This place is amazing and really might be the ultimate seafood market.

The place was packed with customers preparing for New Year's celebrations. I spoke with a few people and we were not the only ones that drove half an hour to shop here. Everything in the store is super fresh. Albany could really use a store like this.

After another quick stop in a Martin's Supermarket (yet another place that is nicer than what is currently available in the Albany area) we went back to the house to get cooking.  Here are some of the appetizers. These shrimp kicked ass and I ate a lot of them. The bacon wrapped scallops didn't make it into the picture. I ate a lot of those too.

Here's Joe's new wine aerator thingy. You pour the wine through, it makes a cool sucking noise and gets some air into the wine.

Dinner is served, steak from our steers and roasted asparagus.

We also had some proschiutto wrapped asparagus.

A salad to add a slightly healthy look to the table.

 
Steamed lobster

A big pot of clams, mussels, scallops, and shrimp cooked in garlic, olive oil  and white wine.

Look at that freakin' bowl of seafood. The broth was insanely good and there was plenty of bread to sop it up. The leftovers got turned into an excellent New Year's day soup.

John, Jen and their son Joshua joined us for the festivities. They brought a bread pudding for dessert (recipe by Emeril). It was excellent.

And when you topped the bread pudding with the bourbon cream sauce, it got better than excellent.

To make the sauce, you use a slurry of bourbon and cornstarch. I don't think it would have ever occurred to me to make a slurry using something other than water. Makes perfect sense. I also had a bunch of Bailey's during the trip. Hadn't had it in years. There's something delicious about a Bailey's on the rocks.

A superb toxic weekend. If you don't have Toxic Friends, I suggest you go out and make some immediately.