My former Mother-in-law's pieroghi's

My former mother-in-law, now long deceased, was a wonderful cook of traditional Polish food. She made her own pieroghi's, cabbage filled or potato or cheese. And she made golumpki's9peppers stuffed with ground meat mixture and cooked in sauce, sometimes instead of peppers it was cabbage leaves), nad stuffed vine leaes (I forget the names of most of the things she made. She also made a delicious cherry soup.

She was a complicated woman. When she cooked for her husband, her son, and me, she refused to sit down at the table and instead stood at the stove, cooking and serving more things. I had never seen anything like that before and I was embarrassed to eat when she was seated, a big faux pas in my family. You never began to eat until everyone was seated, especially mom.

Elma was her name. She was a thin, wrinkled woman about 5 feet 5 inches tall with should length wiry gray hair with a pronounced widow's peak which her son inherited, and grayish colored eyes behind her glasses. Elma was exceptionally emotional, at least compared to my world where my father was the only one who emoted on a regular basis. When Elma wasin some kind of emotional state, usually brought on by the unheard of rudeness of her son, she cr5ied and took to her room and her husband, Herman, took to his hide-away in the basement.

Her son, Michael, demonstrated a form of rudeness I wasn't to see again until my youngest brother reached his mid teens. I am the oldes of five and when I was growing up, Dad ruled like a Medieval king and No ONE would dare be rude to him or to my mother. At my former husband's house, the temperatmental and emotionally unruly son ruled the roost.

The first time I ever met Elma, I arrived expecting the typical suburban Anglo-Saxon style family, but I met something that I recognized years later as a more European scenario. Michael's mother, Elma was dressed in a floor length beaded, circa 1920's formal dress and she had Der Rosenkavalier record playing on the record player. Michael immediately chastised her for humiliating him and she went to her room in tears. I couldn't really understnd what she had done wrong. It was surely different but how was she at fault? She was like a character in a novel and I was a child of novels. My ex-husband's behavior, to me, was far more out of line.

That was years before I knew he had emotional instability, mental illness. All I knew was that he had an explosive temper and no boundaries or awareness of others when he blew his top. It was years before I knew that offspring can inherit traits that haven't been expressed in their parents but in their aunts and uncles. For example I read a study of offspring who had schizophrenia and also webbed toes. Neither of the parents had these traits but the father's siblings had them. Elma had a brother of whom no one ever spoke but over the years I had bleaned that he had been homeless and on the streets in Camden and had a mental illness as well as a mathematical gift. He had been very gifted but his illness eventually took over and he was dysfunctional. >p/> When I married her son, Elma, who I think always had wished to have a daughter, bought me 12 ovely negligees for my honeymoon. I was deeply touched. I felt sad for her when I left her son. We never really spoke because I was afraid that any contact would attach him to me again in some way and he had intimated that he would kill me if I left him.

His company had transfered him to Colorado which was my saving grace. Funny because it was a life insurance company, Insurance Company of North America, and they turned out to be my life insurance because they took away my greatest danger.

To make Elma's pieroghi, you can skip the dough making and buy Mrs. T's piroghi in the frozen food section. So far I have only found the potato but perhaps there are cabbage and cheese ones out there somewhere. You boil the water, drop in the frozen pieroghis and cook until tender. Meanwhile you lightly sautee a diced onion in butter in a skillet and when the pieroghi are finished, use a slotted spook to remove them from the water and laightly sautee them in the onions. Serve with a dollop of sour cream. I used to make her stuffed peppers too, only with brown rice not her meat mixture which was two or three meats ground together I am a vegetarian.

I cooked so many things today and none of them turned out well plus it gave me a terrible back ache and made me think of all the old women over all the uears cooking until their backs ached.

On a lighter note. I think we shoud celelbrate "The DAy of the Window Opening" Today was the first day warm enough to open a window in each room and let the hint of spring come in and freshen the air. I hope my back recovers in time for me to get up and close them when the sun goes down.

Happy trails - through the world, through your memory - Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com Jo Ann