Supper tonight: cottage cheese perogies, gravy and bacon, and corn. YUMMM

We had a great supper tonight. I finally was able to make homemade cottage cheese properly this afternoon so I drained it out and added salt and pepper and threw it in the fridge for supper prep. When Papa got home from work we decided to make wareneke. This is a german perogie dish that we eat with cream gravy, sausage (we are out so we did bacon), with or with out jam. Tonight we had corn as well. Very yummy. But it takes a bit of work to make it all from scratch. This is the 1st time I've been able to make a cottage cheese that tastes, feels and looks like cottage cheese. I do make a great simple white cheese, but the taste is different.
The Cottage cheese.
Remember this is a 1st for me so if it doesn't work the 1st time for you.. Try and try again. Here is what I did. I took a whole gallon of milk, cream and all, and set it by the woodstove. It's quite warm there and it separated in about 2 days. We had a fire the whole time. (getting colder here. This morning was -4C) When it separates's, it splits in to 3 different colors. Yellow on top, mine was hard like cheese so I wonder how warm it really got. Whey in the middle, sort of greeny yellow. And white on the bottom. This is called sour milk and if you want it faster put your fresh milk in the old container without washing it. Or so they tell me:) Then you take this whole thing and dump it into a pot big enough to hold 2 times what you put in it. Then you boil roughly the same amount of water as you have sour milk. Pour the boiling water into the sour milk and stir. The whey separates from the cheese and you have cottage cheese. I poured mine thru a strainer with a clean dishcloth in it and squeezed it dry. Then I stirred it up into nice little chunks, use your fingers if you want, then added a bit of salt and pepper. You can take the cream off your milk and then make cottage cheese then re-add the cream to make a moister cottage cheese. I like mine dry (I've never made it before but I've eaten it lots:) so I don't do this.
The Cottage cheese perogies or Glums Wareneki.
Ok take your homemade cottage cheese (mine made 3 cups) and add
3 egg yolks
pinch of salt
dash of pepper
Mix this all together til its sticky.
Then get a larger bowl and mix.
1 cup of milk
3 egg whites
1 tsp of salt.
Then add enough flour to get a workable dough. Roll out your dough to about 1/4 of a inch thick. Now it is the hardest part. Put a large or small, depending on how big you want your perogie, spoon full of the cottage cheese mix about 2 inches away from the edge of the dough. Bring the edge of the dough up and cover the C.C mixture. Use your fingers to seal the edges of the half circle perogie you just made. Sometimes the dough will not stick and then you need to dip your fingers in water and dampen the edges of the perogie. This takes practice so keep at it. Then take a small plate or bowl and using the edge of the plate cut around the perogie. When done all your dough you can re-roll it or just be done. Today it worked perfectly and I rolled it out once and used all my CC mixture. While you are perfecting this art you should have a large pot of water boiling. Slip your perogies into the boiling water a few at a time and let them cook until they are done. They have a built in timer... they float when they are done.
The Gravy.
I rarely eat gravy. This meal is one of the only times I eat it. Normally I totally don't see the point. But with cottage cheese perogies you have to have gravy. Today we made gravy with bacon drippings. We fried up the bacon and then took the bacon out of the pan and then poured off the fat (I keep this in a container in the fridge for bun making) leaving about 1/2 a cup in the pan. We use cast iron frying pans and you have to be careful that you do not burn yourself. Then you take about 3 tablespoons (I rarely measure but that's about right) and while your fat is hot (and you could use anything, butter, sausage drippings, oil) grab a whisk and sprinkle in the flour into the hot fat while you stir madly. This works best if you have more fat then less. It'll go all brown and bubbly and when it is all brown and bubbly and there are no chunks (any chunks you leave will be chunks in your gravy.) left add about 2 cups of cream, or milk if you must. Keep stirring. This stuff thickens pretty fast but will boil over pretty fast as well. Add salt and pepper and keep on stirring until you get it as thick as you like.
The Meal!!
Thank the God that made you for the wonderful thing you are going to eat and for the blessing of food on the table. Then dish yourself up some perogies, pour gravy over them, drip a bit of raspberry or strawberry jam over the top and eat!! If you are like Papa and cannot mix your sweet and savories; skip the jam and eat it with just gravy. Papa just cannot fathom why we would ever wreck the meal by putting jam on top. I can't imagine it without it. I've tried it without it.. and it's just not the same.
Papa figured out that, with the milk we drank at the table, this meal took about 2 gallons of milk with the cream. What a way to live!! Everything in this meal then except the corn (canned and a treat after weeks of other veg's) and the flour, salt, pepper, sugar,pectin, we made, or grew on our 5 acres. The bacon/fat was from last years pigs, the milk/cream/cottage cheese from the cow, the jam from our raspberry patch. God has blessed us more richly then we deserve. What a wonderful God we serve.