Pierogifest 2023

July 28, 2023

A few years back, I was working in the Chicago area and saw a TV advertisement for the Pierogifest in Whiting, IN. It looked fun, This was one of my favorite foods and I have met so many people who have no idea what a pierogi is. I knew that pierogies were popular with people who knew about them but a festival? How cool is that? I wanted to go but I couldn’t change flights around so that I could be in the area for the festival. Things came up, the pandemic happened and I wasn’t travelling during that time and five years later, I decided that I needed to make the time to attend this food festival.

As I drove from Chicago into Indiana, I began to wonder, have I been to Indiana? I am pretty sure that I haven’t. I like to travel and am proud at the list of states that I have seen but I have a ways to go to say that I have been to all 50. This was another state that I could add to my list of places I have been and what better reason to go to Indiana but to celebrate the pierogi!

I grew up with pierogies, to me it was the ultimate dish, a potato dumpling, sometimes potato and cheese or potato and onion. It was sauteed in butter. It was considered a side dish but growing up, I would be more than happy to give up a steak or piece of chicken to have more pierogies. I could make a meal out of it. At the festival, they had pierogies filled with potato, potato and cheese, sweet cheese, mushroom, mushroom and sour kraut, cherry, strawberry and plum. The had sauteed pierogies and deep fried. They even had a Pizza-rogi. The only thing I didn’t try was the strawberry pierogi.

I loved them all!

Pierogies weren’t the only thing at the festival, they had a lot of other food. The ones that reminded me of my childhood were the poppy seed rolls, potato pancakes and the kolache cookies.

Overall, the festival was fun, they only thing they took seriously was the fun factor. They had buscias (polish grandmothers) and the Pieroguettes (as opposed to the Rockettes). There were parades, plenty of polka bands, eating contests and a pierogi toss