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{{data|18 August 2018}}
[[File:Festiwal Pierogów w Krakowie.jpg|thumb|350px|A stand at the Pierogi Festival in Cracow]]
If you know anything about Polish cuisine, then you must have heard of (and, hopefully, sampled) pierogi, the delicious Polish member of the large and diverse family of stuffed dumplings. Possibilities for the filling are limited only by the cook's imagination, but the typical stuffings include seasonal fruits like strawberries or blueberries, and farmer cheese with sugar for the sweet varieties, and for the savoury ones: ground meat, sauerkraut with mushrooms, and farmer cheese with potatoes and fried onions. The latter kind (so simple, yet so tasty!) is known in Polish as ''pierogi ruskie'', suggesting an origin not in Russia (as some folks, even in Poland, might think), but in Kievan Rus – a medieval civilization centered civilisation centred in what is now Ukraine. Of course, pierogi are still as popular in Ukraine as they are in Poland, except they go there under the name ''varenyky''.
This year, the 16th Pierogi Festival took place in Cracow's Mały Rynek (Lesser Square). It always happens around August 17, that is, the day when the Catholic Church remembers Saint Hyacinth, also known as Jacek Odrowąż. Authors of the festival's best pierogi are awarded a statuette of the holy man, who is often called the patron saint of pierogi. Other pierogi celebrations are held in other parts of the country – invariably on or near Saint Hyacinth's Day.
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It seems to be a minced oath – a saying that is devoid of any deeper meaning, but is derived from a religious invocation that has been altered either to avoid blasphemy, or – in modern times – as a joke. In English we might exclaim "holy smokes!" instead of "Holy Ghost!", "oh my gosh" in place of "oh my God!", or "zounds!" in lieu of "Christ's wounds!" I find it quite likely that "Saint Hyacinth of Pierogi" is the result of a similar alteration and an example of a medieval absurdist sense of humorhumour. The legends meant to explain it arose later.
That's all for today. In the next episode we will continue the topic of saints and their role in the history of Polish food and drink. And as for pierogi and some (modern) surreal humorhumour...
{{Video|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afBKjqAkNSw|szer=400|poz=center|opis=''Eat Pierogi'' by Mee and the Band (2018)}}
What follows is a recipe for ground-ivy pierogi from Mr. Waldemar Sulisz of Lublin, although I don't know to what extent it resembles the recipes from Kościelec.
{{Cytat|'''Ingredients:''' pierogi dough, 4 potatoes, 1 onion, half a brick of twaróg (Polish farmer cheese), 1 brick of bryndza (soft brined sheep cheese), 1 teaspoon of unsalted butter, a handful of ground-ivy leaves and flowers, a bunch of chives, 2 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, ground-ivy-flavored flavoured yogurt.
'''Preparation:''' Boil the potatoes in their skins. Peel and mash with butter, add twaróg and bryndza, chopped ground-ivy, salt and pepper. Brown the chopped onion and garlic in a pan, add the filling and sauté for a while. Roll out the dough, cut out round pockets, wrap pockets around the filling and seal. Cook in salted water. Serve drenched with melted butter and chopped chives. On the side, serve the yogurt with chopped ground-ivy.
