Canadian Thanksgiving is this Monday, October 10, and since I am not travelling this year, I'll just be dreaming of, rather than eating, the perogies that land on my family's dinner table. We still make them just as my grandmother and great-grandmother used to.
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<br />This recipe bears some hallmarks of my grandmother's time, married as she was at the very end of the 1940s. The dough incorporates margarine, which hit Canadian shelves in 1948 and was touted as a healthier alternative to butter (we know better now), and the use of reserved potato water (which she also used for making soups) speaks to the kind of frugality the Great Depression had necessitated.
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<br />For me this is a classic perogy: a soft, tender dough filled with a comforting mash of potatoes and bright-orange cheddar cheese (another nod to newfangled post-War ingredients) blanketed in onions slowly fried and topped with a little pouf of sour cream.
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<br />This dish makes me long for a family feast table set for 20+ diners or a solo late-night supper at home, when a little bag of six dumplings is pulled from the freezer and heated in a fry pan, to be consumed while watching comedic political pundits offer razor-sharp commentary on the state of the world.
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<br />Perogies tend not to be a small-batch affair (if you want just a few cheese dumplings right quick, see my recipe for leniwe, or "lazy perogies," which can be popped off in a fraction of the time). When my family made them back in the day, a gang got together worked morning til night churning out a winter's supply with a variety of fillings -- sour cherries and cottage cheese offered alternatives to the standard potato-cheese. This recipe also makes quite a lot, so enlist some help and plan to freeze small batches dressed in fried onions for quick dinners or snacks when labour beyond turning on a stove burner is out of the question.

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