Dyngus Day!

Today is Dyngus Day! I never really celebrated it in my earlier years of life, but being from Buffalo, and having a mother who is 100% Polish, I definitely know about it! I'll take any reason to have a theme dinner! I mean, who else celebrates National Empanada Day?! I love an Irish dinner for St Patty's, Mexican for Cinco de Mayo, and anything else that pops up! Thus, I've decided to make Dyngus Day dinner a tradition in our home. This is year #2, so I decided to step things up a bit!

My favorite Polish food by far is pierogi. Well, not just any pierogi, but lazy pierogi! I seriously doubt that there is a better food in the world! Lazy pierogi would be my go to Dyngus Day dish... if not for one thing... my husband. My husband HATES sauerkraut. This makes me sad. Alas *sigh* I needed to look for alternatives.

My default meal was polish sausage & pierogis (potato & onion), but I needed something more to add to my spectacular Polish meal! After much research I finally decided on golumpkis (ie stuffed cabbage rolls). Have I ever made these? NO. Have I ever even eaten these? NO. This seemed like quite the challenge... but I was ready to rise to the occasion in honor of my ancestors! I headed to Wegmans, gathered my ingredients, and then spent the remainder of my day in the kitchen.

My beautiful head of savoy cabbage

Time to boil this baby!

All of the recipes I read called for 1 lb of ground beef & 1/2 lb of ground pork or veal. Where the hell do you find ground pork or veal? I was tempted to use my Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment to grind up some boneless pork chops that I have in my freezer, but thanks to Wegmans I did not have to! Look what I found!

Who knew this even existed?!

So, basically, you boil the cabbage leaves. Then, you combine meat, an egg, rice, onions & garlic into a meatloaf concoction. Then, you take chunks of the meat mixture, spoon it into cabbage leaves, roll then up & stick them in a pot of tomato sauce. Simmer for 2-3 hours. Here's what it looks like while cooking:

Golumpki

While my golumpki was simmering away I got to work on my cookies. No, they were not Polish cookies. I wanted to make cookies for a co-worker's birthday tomorrow. (FYI: I looked into Polish desserts & didn't find anything good to make... let me know if anyone knows of anything for next year's Dyngus Day!)

I decided to tweak my Kid's Candy Cookie recipe from 2 weeks ago. Peter really liked the base of the cookie, so I stuck with that & just changed the candy I added to them. I made half with Reeses's Pieces and half with chocolate chips & toffee pieces. I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out!

Reese's Pieces cookies before they hit the oven

Chocolate chip & toffee cookies before they hit the oven

With the cookies baking, it was time to finish my Dyngus Day set up. Pussywillows- check!

Pussywillows!

As Peter entered the house I had a polka pandora station playing, along with a shot of vodka to welcome him home! (He didn't like either of these aspects, but I made him suck it up!)

After that, dinner was served!

Golumpki-definitely tastes better than it looks!

Polish sausage & pierogis

Muffin didn't care much for the pussywillows!

Not so Polish cookies for dessert!

Since I'm all about these theme dinners, I'm thinking that my next ethnic undertaking should be for Bastille Day! A few years back my aunt found out that we have some French in our genealogy! I'm thinking I'm going to take that as my opportunity to finally attempt coq au vin! Bon chance! (Stay tuned to July's posts to see if I actually do this!)