ottawa foodies

There were request for farmers sausage recipe. This one is from the Mennonite Treasury, submitted by Mrs A. Rempel of Chortitz Manitoba. Note this is probably Manitoba farmer sausage - which is different than anything you'd find in Ontario. Although to be fair there is one guy making some fairly good stuff near Cornwall, and Alberta has some good producers. You can start a schism in a Mennonite church on the topic of the best farmers sausage.

12lbs fresh lean pork
6 lbs fresh pork fat
2 tbsp sage
1tbsp pepper
1tsp cloves
1tsp nutmeg
4 tbsp salt

cold smoke, diameter of sausage is usually around 2 inches.

As with most good things in life there is a story....and this one being a small world. Sourdough came out to the homestead one day for some pork a while back. Turns out he was a TA of mine during Engineering. Next is OrganicGirl....her hubby grew up a few towns over from my friend Ernie the Mennonite (EtM for short).

EtM I met while in University. We planted trees together and there were a couple rules in tree planting, one being don't eat someone else's food. EtM grew up on the prairies on a farm in a non communal fashion. His dad rode the box cars during the depression looking for work so we always had a lot of good stories of life in the olden days.

Anyways one day after the laborious task associated with reforestation we agreed to split a pack of Mennonite farmers sausage along with some perogies from the frozen section in the groc store. Back in those days you could not get enough calories. I thought there were 4 sausages in the pack, so I ate 2, turns out there were only 3 so EtM only got one and I ate 2. He ribbed me the rest of summer for that. Eating sausage was never fair I told him.

I thought I had a good lead on a delicious farmers sausage recipe from a friend who went hunting out west last year. Turns out the guy never really got back to me with details. So I call up EtM and ask what they did back on the farm. He said they only went to town for sugar, flour and fuel for the tractors. The rest came off the farm. 5 boys, 1 girl and the parents butchered 3 - 500# hogs a year. They rarely ate beef. He recalled them making sausage but could not recall the details. EtM was kind enough to ask his older brothers what they did and now I am one happy Krusty!

Yesterday started with approx 35# of ground pork of which 12# went to mennonite farmers sausage

And here is the result. Zym notice the Cornie kegs supporting the sausage stick.

And am stuffed after homemade cottage cheese perogies smothered in fried bacon and onions along side Mennonite farmers sausage. If I smoked I would need a ciggy. Was the last bag of perogies in the freezer so I have my work cut out for me one eve this week.

nice looking sausages, they look like the real deal. Pretty impressive for a first attempt.

Those are not perogies, those are werenki and you have officially made me both homesick and hungry. I don't know if I want to hug you or kick you. I lean towards hugging as it usually has less repercussions. :)>

My pa was 100% Ukranian and I can only attest to having Mennonite friends so I call them perogies ;)

ddueck, I looked up werenki and found vereniki, wareneki, vareniki... and they're basically perogies.

I don't think there's a food with more variety in spelling than this!

Wikipedia: pierogi, perogi, pyrogy, perogie, perogy, pirohi, piroghi, pirogi, pirogen, pierogy, pirohy, pyrohy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varenyky
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierogi

Aside from Varenyky being Ukrainian and Pierogi being Polish, is there a consistent difference between the two?

Speaking as a former resident of Ukraine I can tell you - the only difference is the name

Not sure what the root of perogy is but varenyky means literally "that (dear little) thing which is cooked"

Those diminutive endings in slavic languages are just a cool thing we don't really have in English ... (though we do have remnants of them)

I was being a little bit of a smart ass when I wrote that message. Most of the kids always called them perogies because Wereniki had some East European sounds that did not easily come out of any English mouth. Although the possible fillings are endless and the variety of preparation innumerable, I was brought up on the sweet ones identified in the Wikipedia article mentioned above. We filled them with dry cottage cheese or blueberries or plums and then boiled them. We then served them with Farmer Sausage and peas. We made a cream sauce by warming up sour cream in the fat from the farmer sausage and then covered the werenki (This was not a low calorie meal). It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that there were other styles and varieties. I firmly believe that Gyozas and Potstickers are brothers from another mother. I firmly now never resist or turn down any food wrapped in dough and boiled or fried. Thanks all for the memories.

Btw local ottawa band Ukrainia who sing in Ukrainian have a song Who Stole My Kishka in which they sing abour all sorts of ukrainian foods including perohy but nor vareniki

A local Ukranian band? Why haven't I heard them on the radio lately?

I dunno ... I never heard them on the radio either. They are most of the members of Hilotrons - an alter ego band ukrainia.org/

Frikkin awesome if you can see them live!

They have a few albums including "Never Mind the Pollocks ... here's Ukrainia" with an album cover which looks identical to the iconic one from the Sex Pistols

Anyway, back to the topic, I have been thinking hard all day about Perohy vs Vareniki and in Odessa at least I think the difference was that vareniki were always really small and Perohy what we consider normal here for Perogy. And was also thinking that "Perohy" is definitely a Ukrainian word - with the g/h switch that is common between a lot of Russian/Ukrainian words. It could also be an east/west thing in how they are used - Eastern Ukraine has stronger ties to Russia and Western Ukraine to Poland and Europe

All this talk makes me hungry. 5 gallons of milk on the stove for making cottage cheese as we speak. Bacon smoked today and should be back to perogies for dinner this weekend.

Thanks for the recipe! The sausage looks amazing, and so do the perogies! I remember the sausage we used to get from Waldheim, and it seemed wider than what you have. Maybe 2 and a half or even 3" wide.

When we lived out in Saskatchewan, we knew tons of Unkraians, and they always called them Perogi. Never heard the term Varenyky before this thread. I think I eat loads of both, regardless of what they were being called! :-)

Zym, is your family from Odessa? That's where my mothers family is from.

No my family is from near Kamanetz-Podolsky

Varenyky are a little different. I think they are with corn flour? I know that if I call my wife's varenyky perogies one more time that she will divorce me.

Not Corn Flour!

That is so new world...

:)

My imagination. Just asked my lovely wife. Potato flour. Of course it's not corn... what was I thinking?

She admits that she actually doesn't know the difference but she remsains adamant that they are different. COMPLETELY difference. And, I agree. Otherwise she may withhold the manufacture of varenyky.

Best reason ever!

P.S. Potato flour is just as "new world" as corn flour. :-)