I love church festivals, they were a major form of entertainment when I was a kid.   And I love food in general, especially when it is made with a helping of love.  So I was off this past weekend to the local Slavic Festival.   And where was it you might ask?   Way out in the country.

That distant peak on the horizon is the 14000 foot mountain, looking kind of puny.   And what was I after?

I actually went out there for the pierogis (potato dumplings), but these were not that great.  I make them with a thinner dough (and love), so mine are much better.  But the kielbasa and halupski (bacon, noodles, cabbage and onion) were outstanding, and the cabbage rolls were pretty good too.   These are not the kinds of food I ate as a child, and I probably wouldn’t have even sampled them.  But I have acquired the taste for these over the years  from when I traveled in Canada (pierogis in Manitoba) and Russia.

At one point there were a lot of Czechoslovakian farmers in this area and they started this church.   And they have maintained a congregation for over 100 years.  The church is  is quite charming and exotic and  they got a huge turnout of people who remember this sort of food from their childhoods.  And even people like me, who don’t.