At this time of year I like to think about all the family traditions that I grew up with.  I think a lot of the holiday season is based on tradition.  One of the family traditions I remember as a child was making pierogis with my mom and dad.  A pierogi is an amazing little taste of heaven if you ask me. Essentially its a stuffed dumpling.  The fillings can range from sweet to savory.  For me though my absolute favorite is a saurkraut/mushroom filling.  It is so delicious.  I know a lot of people who love the potato/ cheese ones but those never really appealed to me.  My mom loves the sweet cheese ones. Those are good as well.  So while thinking of traditions this season I decided it was time to try and have Abby help me make pierogis.  Now I haven't made them in probably twenty years but I remembered the general concept.  Make the filling, make the dough, roll the dough, cut it, fill it and seal it.  I decided to try a new dough recipe from the one my mom used to use.  I remember that dough giving her a hard time many times so rather then set myself up for failure I decided to try a new recipe.  I decided it would be fun to document the whole process.  Love food photography. So here we go!

The line up for the filling. I decided to make the filling a couple of days ahead of time so the day we made the dough it wouldn't be an all day event.

Chop the onion.  Boil the saurkraut.  Melt the butter, mmm butter. Then saute the onions

Add the mushrooms to the onions and then add the kraut. That then simmered for a couple of hours.

Today was the big day to make the dough and hope I chose a dough recipe that would be forgiving for the first time pierogi maker.  The dough was super easy to work with, phew!

In walks my helper.  She hates eating pierogis but I figured she would at least like to help make them. 

I was right, she loved to work with the dough. She helped cut out a few circles for me but her real interest was in playing with the scrap dough. That's ok because that's what I used to do when my mom made the pierogis. See tradition.

Ready to be sealed.  Doesn't it look delicious?

Tray one done.  With the dough you have to work quickly before it drys out on you so there weren't a ton of photos being taken at this point. Working against the clock here.  In the end I ended up with two and half dozen. 

My other little helper who didn't have any interest to join us until we were done.  Oh well maybe next year he'll want to participate.  We are planning on having these tonight for dinner. Fingers crossed they taste good and they don't fall apart on me in the boiling process....

********  Update on the pierogis:  They were delicious! All the hard work paid off!