When I was growing up, my mother would make vareniki, potato-filled dumplings. Most people call them pierogies, but I only knew them as vareniki. She learned how to make them from her mother-in-law and my Bubbie, my father’s mother. Mom was the only one in her generation of the family who learned how to make them even though my dad had four sisters!
It was a very special thing when Mom would make them, as it only happened once a year, usually in the winter. The expression “labor of love” is the only phrase that applies, and because there were six of
