In early June 1977, I took a group of slides of my family at home on Stamets Road in Holland Township, NJ. In this group are pictures of: Gretchen our dog, several single iris blooms, a family portrait of us all standing in front of the house, but the prize for me are three photos of the family eating pierogi with Grandmom Zdepski present. I was visiting from Alaska, taking a rare break during the frenetic summer work season.
Grandmom was delivered by Pop Zdepski to Stamets Road in the afternoon to make pierogi at my request. While she was making pierogi, I helped and took notes so I could carry the recipe back to Alaska with me. We started from scratch, peeling and boiling potatoes, cooking bacon and onion, then mashing these with dry curd cottage cheese into the drained potatoes to create the stuffing. This part was easy to document; I counted potatoes, onions and strips of bacon for this first part, noting how to chop or cut the ingredients and the dry curd came in a measured sleeve from the grocery store. However, my note-taking took a sharp left turn when Grandmom made the noodle dough.
It shocked me that she just dumped a quantity of flour onto the table, made a pocket in the top, put in a quantity of salt from the palm of her hand, cracked two eggs into it, dropped in some water and began mixing it with her left hand, adding a dash from a water glass now and again with her right hand. Never before had I seen such “hands-on” cooking with my own eyes. How could I quantify what just occurred? I needed measurements. My consternation caused great amusement for Mom and Grandmom. Mom stepped in and advised me what had just happened, providing an estimate of the cups of flour and gave me a brief tutorial on noodle dough.
During the stuffing and pinching phase of making the stuffed noodles we used a jar for the circle cutting and I was advised that using a warm batch of potato stuffing was not ideal. It works much better with cold stuffing made the day before. As we approached time to boil the “little pigeons” Grandmom also advised me that you never count the pierogi before cooking, as this will cause them to fall apart while boiling. During boiling she also told me her sister had once mentioned that using an aluminum pot also caused pierogi to fall apart when cooking them.
Making the bacon & onion rue and subsequent flour and milk gravy looked easy when Grandmom did it (it was much harder for me when I tried it a month or two later). When the family assembled to eat, Grandmom sat with us but did not partake. She had us call Pop to come pick her up. While we were eating, I took the three photos from different angles. Grandmom sat in “Mom’s place”. We all seemed to have “assigned seating” that was jealously fought over with rampant bickering, dirty tricks (like licking the plate while setting the dishes) and an occasional physical yank, or twist of an arm. Mom sat next to Dad at the opposite end, a rare departure from the norm. Pop came, and Grandmom exited while we were all engaged in wolfing down the prized pierogi!
Upon returning to Alaska, Linda and I successfully made authentic pierogi. Thank goodness for skilled help, because I couldn’t have done it alone.
During this same trip home, I made corn tortilla tacos for the family. We had never seen tacos before I left home in 1969, so this was culinary tourism for the family. The meal went over pretty well, except Dad couldn’t handle using his fingers to hold the greasy taco shell, opting for a knife and fork instead. He ate them and even had seconds. Joel reminded me that I also made stacked enchiladas from a recipe on the label of the enchilada sauce can. The recipe consisted of chopped onions and cheese stacked on corn tortillas and slathered in sauce. According to Joel’s recollection this recipe contributed to the discovery of an enormous reserve of natural gas at 195 Stamets Road. It seems that everyone was afflicted with an upset digestive tract, except me.
Finally, I believe it was a different trip home, after I’d lived in Alaska for a while that on my first night home I had the culture shock of eating with my family again. First off, I noticed how loud everyone was during the meal. Second, there was jockeying for position at the table, wanting the coveted gas-station-giveaway-utensils with the star on it, passing food, or intentionally not passing food, and possibly even spilling milk from those tall colored aluminum “glasses” that were popular at the time. Because I was back at the house for the first time in a year, after the meal Mom asked me how I liked being home again. I told her, “It is nice, but it is like eating with pirates,” meaning the noise level and the hustle for food was unexpected. I could immediately see that Mom was slightly offended by my observation, so I had to do some quick explaining about being “out of shape” for dealing with the siblings in their teen and pre-teen years.
As a post-script, while typing this I remembered a story that Mom told about having a job when she and Stephen first took our family to Alaska. Before settling into the Baptist Mission home there was a short period of time when they (we) stayed in an apartment and Mom got a job as a “bull cook” at the nearby fish cannery. As part of the job, she served the food to the table after the men were seated. On “Steak Night” she brought out a platter of T-Bones and the crowd started stabbing the meat to get theirs before the plate hit the tablecloth. Ruth quickly dropped the plate and withdrew with no injuries, but after the meal was finished, while clearing tables, wiping down and sweeping up she found a full-sized T-Bone on the floor beneath the center of the table! I think she only lasted for a week as a bull cook. However, Mom had a real experience of eating with pirates, by comparison, my experience had training-wheels on it.
Leave a Reply