A Ukrainian-Saskatchewan Christmas

My mother-in-law never tasted a vegetable that wasn't cooked in cream until she was married. She lived on a regular working farm, with chickens, cows, a big garden and grainfields. She also ate her eggs cooked in cream. This was no thin pasteurized cream in little cartons from Safeway. This was farm cream, yellow and thick, with an even thicker layer of solid cream sitting on top. She mused, "We ate what we had! No wonder all of my uncles died of heart disease in their mid-fifties." Marian cooks the best comfort food I've ever had. I don't like Gourmet Christmases. I don't like potatoes mashed with weird things and beef cooked with strange mushrooms at this time of year. No, what I want at Christmastime is exactly what I've eaten for every Christmas for the past 32 years. I want perogies, cheese-and-potato filled dumplings. Marian makes three or four kinds: plain, with onions and butter, cooked in cream sauce and with mushroom dill cream sauce. Plus, Marian makes turkey and ham and stuffing and cabbage rolls and lasagna (for something new) and mashed potatoes and cheese mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and green beans and peas and a fruit platter and a vegetable platter and a cheese platter and Jell-o salad. It's a crazy-making whirl of food, one that prompts people to take two plates at a time in an effort to cram as much food as possible into one sitting. Last year, she made holubtsi, Ukrainian for little pigeons, which can also refer to cabbage rolls, but in this case meant tiny bits of bread dough rolled up in beet leaves, baked and then cooked in a cream sauce. It's a heart-stopper, but utterly delicious. Then come desserts: pumpkin cream, angel food and what ladies in Rouleau call a "dainty platter". You basically take a giant platter and fill it full of homemade baking. This included the all-purpose "squares", which is any kind of dessert you can cook and serve in bar form. Saves a busy farm wife a load of time when guests come over. Again, the dainty platter is a cornucopia of sweets and guilt, including brownies, shortbread, poppyseed rolls, cherry cheesecake tarts, cherry tarts and cinnamon rolls. These last items are called scuffles. Not sure why. The year Marian had shoulder surgery she held back and only made nine kinds of sweets. Unfortunately, everyone's turned into a diabetic and were forced to hold back on everything except the green beans. But not me. Not yet.