Yum....pierogies

I grew up in a household with a mother of Polish descent, and so she made pierogies all of the time. She would spend all day making them and leave them on a big plate on the kitchen table until she was ready to sautee them for dinner. My brother and I would sneak in and grab a few here and there.

Over the weekened a local church had a pierogi sale. Since my mother has some health problems and
can't make them now, we headed out to buy some They had cheese, sauerkraut, mushroom and sauerkraut, potato, meat and blueberry. My mother mostly made cheese but I got some of the sauerkraut it try for myself.

I have my mother's pierogi recipe, which is vegetarian so I make it once  in awhile. They freeze well and they are a good meal or snack on a winter evening.

This article "An Introduction to Polish Pierogi" will tell you just about everything you need to know and  the second part of the article will tell you how to make pierogi.

Granola Bars

Every once in awhile I go through my cupboards and refrigerator looking for odds and ends that I want to use up and get rid of. Sometimes this challenges my creativity as I come across things that I would never put together, only to find an online recipe for that very combination. Other times I find that I'm sick of an ingredient and want to get rid of it, only to find a great recipe that makes me keep buying it. Rarely, I find exactly everything that I want to make a recipe of my choice. This weekend I realized that I bought most of the ingredients for Healthy 5-Ingrediant Granola bars by the Minimalist Baker.

I didn't have almonds for this recipe but I had pumpkin seeds, which worked great. My little food processor is on the blink so I chopped the dates finely instead of processing them into a paste. I also forgot to heat the honey and peanut butter but it just made for a little more effort mixing things together. These were quick to make and turned out to be quite tasty. They were a little loose to hold together but I guess it is because the dates were only chopped. I would make these again.