Pierogi - Barb

Barb's homemade pierogi

Thanks to Barb, we got the pleasure of devouring her buttery, potato-filled pierogies!  This delicious recipe was handed down from her late mother, Ann Jarecki.  You will have to go the extra mile for this awesome polish dish, but it will be well worth it!  ENJOY!

Combine the following and mix:

3 Cups Flour
1/2 Pint Sour Cream
1/2 Stick Margarine
1 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs
1 Egg Yolk

*Refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour.
*Flour surface and roll out dough.
*Use a glass or cookie cutter to cut out circle shaped dough.
*Put about a tsp. of filling (below) in center of dough and fold over, pinching the ends to seal.  You can use the tines of a fork to seal if you prefer.
*Place formed dumpling (pierogi) into boiling water.
*When pierogies float to the top, take out with slotted spoon and place on waxed paper or oil sprayed cookie sheet.
*Fry pierogi in butter turning once.
*Serve with Sour Cream!

Filling:  I used potato for my filling for Book Club.  Chop and saute onions.  Mash boiled potatoes; add butter and sauteed onions.  Instead of using milk, I added sour cream.

February Book Club Selection - Kim

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Below is a description of the book (taken from Amazon) we will be reading in February.  We will discuss this book on Wednesday,February 25.

In Lisa Genova's extraordinary New York Times bestselling novel, an accomplished professor diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease learns that her worth is comprised of more than her ability to remember.  Now a major motion picture from Sony Pictures starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, and Kristen Stewart!

Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build.  At fifty years old, she's a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children.  When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life--and her relationship with her family and the world--forever.

At once beautiful and terrifying, Still Alice  is a moving and vivid depiction of life with early-onset Alzheimer's disease that is as compelling as A Beautiful Mind and as unforgettable as Ordinary People.  

Frozen German Sweet Chocolate Pie - Tracy

Tracy decided to "theme" our dessert with a German pie.  Not only was it delicious, but super easy to whip up!  She found the recipe on Kraft's website.

1 pkg. (4 oz.) BAKER'S GERMAN'S Sweet chocolate
1/3 cup milk, divided
4 oz. Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping
1 ready-to-use graham cracker crumb crust (6 oz.)

Microwave chocolate and 2 Tbsp. of milk in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 1-1/2 to 2 minutes or until chocolate is almost melted.  Add cream cheese, sugar and remaining milk; beat with wire whisk until well blended.  Refrigerate 10 min. to cool.

ADD whipped topping; stir gently until well blended.  Spoon into crust.

FREEZE 4 hours or until firm.  Let stand at room temperature or in refrigerator about 15 min. or until pie can be cut easily.  Store leftover pie in freezer.

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!

All the Light We Cannot See -- Discussion

Homemade German Cuisine

Book:  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Meeting Place:  Tracy's basement
Ratings:
Kim - 4.75

Tracy - 3.75

Michaelene - 2.75
Melissa - 4.5
Barb - 4
Kathy - 2.5
Sherry - 3.75
Average Rating:  3.71

Our night began with a delicious German cuisine which consisted of brauts/sauerkraut, potato pierogies, salad, pasta salad, and pears.  Melissa popped the cork to some French Champagne and we toasted the new year!  We traveled back in the 1940's to France and Germany and explored the damage and destruction of World War II.  All the Light We Cannot See presented many interesting, unique topics which made for a great discussion!  We explored all the story lines throughout the book and shared which/whom we liked the best.  Marie-Laure was highly admired because of her strength living a life blind.  We really felt the struggles and challenges a blind person experiences.  Another favorite character was her father.  We admired how he built city models for Marie-Laure so she could experience some freedom around town.  He was definitely a candidate for "father of the year".  Werner, an orphan, highly knowledgable of radio transmissions, did not go unnoticed.  Other favorites discussed were Uncle Etienne and Madame Manec.

Michaelene's the winner!

BCDP:  In the story, there were 4 diamonds floating around and being searched.  One was real and rare, the other 3 fake.  Marie-Laure's father escaped France with the real diamond, "Sea of Flames", which put him and his family in danger.     Sherry themed the BCDP with 6 "gems".  The red gem was the "Sea of Flames", where the blue were fakes.  She taped them under our chairs and the winner, Michaelene, had the real deal!  She won a gift card to Panera Bread.  

Recommendation:  There were some mixed reviews, but most members enjoyed the book and would recommend it!  We really liked the characters and the World War II setting.  Some members did not like the jumping around in time.  Sherry felt the book could've been 100 pages shorter and complained there were too many unnecessary details.  Overall, a great read with some high ratings from our members.

Extra:  Sherry bought reader wraps for the entire group!  

 

January Book Club Selection - Sherry

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Below is a description of the book (taken from Amazon) we will be reading in January.  We will discuss this book on Wednesday, January 28.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the beautiful, stunningly ambitious instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks.  When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home.  When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea.  With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel.  

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by crude radio they find.  Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance.  More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.

Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling.  Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.  Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" (Los Angeles Times).