Happy New Years to all!!

Since we are starting to get "coping" behaviors popping up we cancelled all our plans for yesterday and decided to stay home. Because even good stimulation is stimulation. Other than Ryah, who has reverted quite severely, the girls have been pretty tolerant the the holiday crazies. But it was time to tone it all down several notches.

We have been promising the girls (well, everyone) that we would make veryniki (don't even ask how to spell that-- like Japanese it is all just "best guess" spelling of words spelled with a different alphabet, anyway). Veryniki is Ukrainian "dumplings." Though, in my mind, that word doesn't really fit, it is close. Inside veryniki you can put anything. However, traditionally tthe most common ones are: cabbage (pickled or plain) veryniki, mushroom veryniki, cottage cheese veryniki, cherry veryniki and all different kinds of meat veryniki. We lived on veryniki when we were in Ukraine. That is the reason that Elijah calls diaper cream, "sour cream." LOL
Anyway, we had quite a production line going. The kids all had a blast!

We had potato filling (potato, onion, salt and pepper).

mushroom filling (mushrooms, onions, garlic)

cabbage filling (cabbage, carrots, onion, and egg)

We also had cottage cheese filling but we didn't get a good picture of it. It had cottage cheese and bacon. Not like the cottage cheese ones we had in Ukraine. Those were sweet but we couldn't find a recipe for the sweet ones.

The finished product.

The first ones the kids did got to be very soggy and stuck together so rather than waste all that food Keith made "bubble and squeak" out of it. Though it wasn't Boxing Day they still tasted yummy!



Nice way relax and now we have veryniki to pull out of the freezer whenever we are feeling homesick for Ukraine.