Babe's (Bubbe's) Varenikes

Author Notes

Day 1:

Dear Mati,

I am starting the writing of this post before I even begin doing the challenge. As I think about food and think about what I am going to prepare, I am constantly thinking about how I am going to write about it and sometimes I have the story so wonderfully written down in my head but the moment I sit down to actually write it I either forget it or just cannot write it. So this post is a process.

This month's Daring Cook's challenge is very special to me. As soon as I saw the recipe posted I picked up the phone to call my mother and tell her "Mami! We are going to make v(b)anerikes, Babe's recipe, this month." Babe (Bubbe, in Spanish...aka Rebeca) was my mothers grandmother and when I saw the challenge was to make a recipe my mom had learned with her I got so excited. I wrote v(b)arenikes with the b in parenthesis because as it is with old recipes and customs we all have a way of doing things. I am sticking with varenikes. In the many family recipes we looked for the varenikes recipe, we found it written in different ways and the recipes were all somewhat different. Some add butter, others add one egg, others add two eggs. We made it our own based on my mom's memory of learning how to make them with Babe many years ago. Just remember that with these recipes you can always play around. You can add two eggs but less water, you know what I mean.

The best part of the whole challenge was sitting at the dinner table the night before opening the different recipe books my mom has collected over the years, and when I say collected I really mean a notebook where she has written down recipe after recipe. Recipes from her grandma, her aunt, friends, and her own. What a treasure! Our friend from Qulinaria has been here visiting so she was sitting with us at the table. The day before she had given a baking class at the house with some friends and she made an amazing apple strudel and a scrumptious pear and almond tart! While we were sitting looking through the recipes, we found the apple strudel recipe in the mix, a recipe Ana had given my mom many years ago and it was not until that day that she had ever seen it again, and never even tried it on her own! Ana said "Vivi, the best part is that I can keep on tricking you with new recipes every day that are not really new!" We all started crying from how hard we were laughing. (If you don't think this is funny, then you just had to be there.)

I got to know Babe, but she passed away while I was still a baby so the memories are all stories my mom and her sisters tell me as well as this picture.


Back to the challenge.

The challenge describes varenikes as Pierogi, little dumplings filled with different foods depending on where they are from. They said that almost every culture has one on its menu. Wikipedia has a good article where you can read about the different kind of Pierogi. For this post, we will call the Pierogi: varenikes.

Day 2:

So we figured out a recipe and made the Varenikes. Varenikes are very easy to make they are just labor intensive.
—FetaArepa