01 January 2015

Padahae for the New Year

Happy New Year! (I'm not quite late—it's still January 1 in my time zone!)

I'm pretty sure we haven't once stayed up until midnight on New Year's Eve since getting married, and that record stands another year: we pulled out fun cheese, crackers, fudge and sparkling grape juice after Little Bear fell asleep last night, but by 10:30 we both agreed that we were too tired to put off sleep any longer. Parenthood... We feel so old sometimes, especially compared to people we know our age who aren't married/parents! :-)

We'd kind of planned to spend the evening with my family and watch the university's annual fireworks display, but between Little Bear not napping and thus losing "Grandma's house privileges" and two of my siblings potentially coming down with something, a quiet night in wound up being the right decision. We talked about also giving up our afternoon plans because of Little Bear's lack of nap, but I'm so glad that we decided not to!

Matt, Little Bear and I all spent New Year's Eve afternoon at my "adopted grandmother"s house learning to make padahae, Ukrainian pierogi. We had such a good time, learning by making them ourselves under her guidance, and hearing stories of her learning to make them as a girl and passing on the tradition to three more generations of her family. We feel so blessed that she was willing to spend an afternoon sharing the tradition with us!

I made the dough, Matt rolled it out, and we all filled and tightly crimped the padahae before boiling them. Some people freeze the padahae before boiling them, but I like the idea of having them pre-cooked: we'll be able to simply thaw and reheat them, either in the microwave or a skillet. Before rolling it out, we divided the dough roughly in half: the first batch was filled with potatoes, the second with sauerkraut. The sauerkraut was cooked in a skillet with a bit of oil and salt and pepper, we assume for the sake of cooking off liquid, but she said she didn't know for sure—she always cooked the sauerkraut first, because her mother always did. That's a good enough reason for me!

Right now the padahae are layered out flat in the freezer so they won't freeze all sticking together, and tomorrow I'll portion them into bags for meals. We fried up a few of the potato-filled padahae with some onions and homemade kielbasa for supper last night, and they were delicious!


(Better photo tomorrow; standing over the open chest freezer in our 45-degree garage was too cold to take the time to get a good picture tonight!!)

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