When Easter is mentioned to most people, I'd guess that they imagine eggs and chicks and chocolate bunnies. And a few probably think of Easter Sunday and going to church, during which they'll be reminded of the whole deal with crucifixion and salvation. This year, when Easter popped up on my mental radar, it made me think of perogies.
I will attempt to connect the not-so-linear dots of my line of thinking. My grandmother (90+ years old and still going, bless her and I'm hoping I got her genes) was born in the Ukraine a little before World War I. Her family emigrated to western Canada when she was young, joining the latest wave of immigrants to be subjected to the usual racist abuse poured on the most recent arrivals. And so, little of her Ukrainian heritage was passed on in the family; instead, I mostly bear the imprint of my three other grandparents who were of English settler stock.
The one bit of her culture that my grandmother has held onto is the food. Ukrainian cuisine may not be of the same significance worldwide as French or Italian or Chinese, but there's something about a spread of perogies, cabbage rolls, and smoked sausages that is homey and comforting, even to me. Whenever Granny was up to visit, the family would go to the White Rose restaurant for dinner at least once for the Ukrainian buffet. When the White Rose closed, it was on to a little takeout place in a minimall called TJ's (no relation to Trader Joe's). To this day, Granny swears that the food at TJ's is the most genuine Ukrainian food she's had in Canada.
Growing up I took some interest in my Ukrainian roots, though not so much that I can bounce on my haunches like a true cossack dancer. Since the Ukraine falls under the umbrella of the Eastern Orthodox churches, it shares their emphasis placed on Easter relative to Christmas that is somewhat opposite to what is generally seen in the West. Commercialization has a lot to do with it...Thinking about it, Easter really is the important part, as few of us had a choice about being born but it's a pretty impressive thing if you can choose the manner and meaning of one's passing. I digress. Ukraine, Easter--Ukrainian Easter eggs! You've seen 'em, you know 'em, you love 'em.
OK, so somewhere in there, I think I was trying to draw out (at length) my brain's free association of Easter with the Ukraine with Granny with perogies, so now let's get back to the food. Frozen perogies are available in every supermarket I've been to in Canada, but there's a dearth of them in California, I guess to make more room for frozen burritos. It's a shame! Those plump little dumplings full of potato-ey, cheesy, oniony goodness...first boil, then fry, add a little chopped-up kolbassa, and before you know it you're tying a kerchief over your head and calling yourself "Babushka". (The women's style of the kerchief on the head is so strongly associated in Ukrainian that the one word, babushka, can refer to either the grandmother or the handkerchief--where one is, you'll have the other.)
The frozen perogies are just fine for 99% of the population, but I have this knee-jerk reaction to find the hard way of doing things, and in college I found a recipe for perogies. Very simple, just some boiled potatoes, flour, onion, cottage cheese...no problem, until time came to actually wrap the little guys up. A few hours later, I had made a few very messy perogies and was considering turning my back on my heritage. But my mom caught wind of my efforts and in that way that mothers have, pulled what I considered an ancient artifact out of a closet somewhere: "Hunky Bill's Perogy Maker".
The HBPM was eye-opening in a couple ways. For one, I discovered a new racist term for Ukrainian-Canadians ("hunky"), though Hunky Bill apparently referred to himself as a hunky, so I guess it's sorta like the n-word (OK to say if you're on the inside). More importantly, it could make dozens of perogies in literally seconds, and soon I was swimming in them--could even fill the freezer with them. My one-quarter Ukrainian soul was at ease. However, many years ago when I came down to California for school, my kitchen utensils didn't come with me, and I don't know what happened to my HBPM. I wouldn't have left it behind if I had known how few perogies there were down here.
I have no idea where the conversation came from this past fall, but while either setting up or tearing down a Surf City CX course, I discovered that Jeff C. also had a Ukrainian grandmother and also appreciated a fine perogy (or varenkii, or barahy; they aren't uniquely Ukrainian and can be found under many names in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe). Jeff C. is a sensible guy so my guess is that he quickly cleared such an inane conversation from his memory banks, but it settled into some crevice of my mind and stuck around long enough to relaunch itself into my brain when Easter and all of its Ukrainian associations came along. And what does a modern person do the minute something drops into their brain? Google it, of course.
There's no online purchase option yet, and it wouldn't be likely to make it here by Easter even if it had one, but soon I will have perogies once again. And I should really close this off with a great big "Happy Easter" in Ukrainian, but I only ever took one year of Russian as an approximation and we didn't get to holiday formalisms. Ah well. Go ride a bike or somethin'.
