Published March 19, 2007
When I was young, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays so we ate fish or pierogis.
(Yeah, well, sometimes we ate toasted cheese, too.)
Then, in the '60s, the Catholic Church relaxed the rules and we could eat meat on Fridays - except during Lent. So, this time of year always sends me on a trip down Pierogi Memory Lane.
When I was young, my mother - who, being Hungarian, had dumpling skills for chicken paprikash but not pierogis - would phone St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church on East 31st Street in Lorain - my dad's family's church - and order dozens of the potato-filled dumplings.
Then we would take a big empty bowl and a piece of tinfoil to St. John's church basement where tables of old women chatted in Ukrainian as they turned out pierogi after pierogi, lining them up on a big wooden cutting board. When the board was full, someone would carry it into the kitchen where other workers would drop the stuffed dumplings into boiling water.
When the pierogis were done cooking, they would be ladled into a big pot and it was from that pot your order would be counted out into the bowl you brought, ladled with butter and sauteed onions and sealed up with your piece of tinfoil.
Well, St. John's is still making pierogis - not every Friday but the third Friday of every month. And the dozens of very old women who made them when I was young have been replaced with about 20 young and old, male and female, church members, about half of whom speak Ukrainian.
Friday I went to St. John's to pick up some pierogis I had ordered.
I introduced myself to the man checking orders and taking payment at the door.
He pointed over toward the stove. "Talk to Father," he said.
I looked across the room and I saw a man in a T-shirt stirring huge steaming pots. I looked back at the seated money-taker.
"Father. Over there," he pointed again.
Then I realized he meant the young man in the T-shirt.
Father Steven Paliwoda was working just as hard as everyone else making the 200 dozen pierogis they expected to sell that day. He spoke to me in English but occasionally spoke to the woman next to him in Ukrainian.
Donna Kapucinski, who is 69 and lives in the same house on East 31st that she lived in as a child, told me St. John's has been making pierogis for at least 75 years.
"My grandmother made them here," she told me.
Across town, at St. Anthony's Catholic Church on East Erie Avenue, pierogi-making has been taken to a new level.
The school's PTU - with help from volunteer parishoners - makes about 1,200 dozen each week. Last year, the group made $32,000 selling pierogis.
Chairpersons Carla Rock and Lisa Stefan have the weekly sale down to a science. Those who can't come to the church to help out can peel potatoes or chop onions at home.
Unlike the Ukrainian St. John's, St. Anthony's has no ethnic affiliation. In fact, the priest, Father Joe West, who is Scottish and German, said he never heard of pierogis until he got to Lorain.
When I went to visit its pierogi-making operation last week, I was sent home with bags of frozen pierogis to cook.
So we've been eating pierogis every day since.
My son just asked me if I wanted anything from Taco Bell. He was going to get a March Madness snack.
"There's a lot of pierogis left in the refrigerator," I told him.
"I don't know how many days in a row I can eat pierogis," he said.
And then he added, "How many did you buy anyway? A gross?"
No, I thought, that's just the number of calories in all those pierogis I've eaten.
When I was young, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays so we ate fish or pierogis.
(Yeah, well, sometimes we ate toasted cheese, too.)
Then, in the '60s, the Catholic Church relaxed the rules and we could eat meat on Fridays - except during Lent. So, this time of year always sends me on a trip down Pierogi Memory Lane.
When I was young, my mother - who, being Hungarian, had dumpling skills for chicken paprikash but not pierogis - would phone St. John's Ukrainian Catholic Church on East 31st Street in Lorain - my dad's family's church - and order dozens of the potato-filled dumplings.
Then we would take a big empty bowl and a piece of tinfoil to St. John's church basement where tables of old women chatted in Ukrainian as they turned out pierogi after pierogi, lining them up on a big wooden cutting board. When the board was full, someone would carry it into the kitchen where other workers would drop the stuffed dumplings into boiling water.
When the pierogis were done cooking, they would be ladled into a big pot and it was from that pot your order would be counted out into the bowl you brought, ladled with butter and sauteed onions and sealed up with your piece of tinfoil.
Well, St. John's is still making pierogis - not every Friday but the third Friday of every month. And the dozens of very old women who made them when I was young have been replaced with about 20 young and old, male and female, church members, about half of whom speak Ukrainian.
Friday I went to St. John's to pick up some pierogis I had ordered.
I introduced myself to the man checking orders and taking payment at the door.
He pointed over toward the stove. "Talk to Father," he said.
I looked across the room and I saw a man in a T-shirt stirring huge steaming pots. I looked back at the seated money-taker.
"Father. Over there," he pointed again.
Then I realized he meant the young man in the T-shirt.
Father Steven Paliwoda was working just as hard as everyone else making the 200 dozen pierogis they expected to sell that day. He spoke to me in English but occasionally spoke to the woman next to him in Ukrainian.
Donna Kapucinski, who is 69 and lives in the same house on East 31st that she lived in as a child, told me St. John's has been making pierogis for at least 75 years.
"My grandmother made them here," she told me.
Across town, at St. Anthony's Catholic Church on East Erie Avenue, pierogi-making has been taken to a new level.
The school's PTU - with help from volunteer parishoners - makes about 1,200 dozen each week. Last year, the group made $32,000 selling pierogis.
Chairpersons Carla Rock and Lisa Stefan have the weekly sale down to a science. Those who can't come to the church to help out can peel potatoes or chop onions at home.
Unlike the Ukrainian St. John's, St. Anthony's has no ethnic affiliation. In fact, the priest, Father Joe West, who is Scottish and German, said he never heard of pierogis until he got to Lorain.
When I went to visit its pierogi-making operation last week, I was sent home with bags of frozen pierogis to cook.
So we've been eating pierogis every day since.
My son just asked me if I wanted anything from Taco Bell. He was going to get a March Madness snack.
"There's a lot of pierogis left in the refrigerator," I told him.
"I don't know how many days in a row I can eat pierogis," he said.
And then he added, "How many did you buy anyway? A gross?"
No, I thought, that's just the number of calories in all those pierogis I've eaten.
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