Note for all recipes
Use your eyes rather than your measuring cup

Pirogis (Ukrainian):

(Note - this process may take three hours if you're feeding multiple people)

Put some potatoes on to boil.

Sift about 5 cups flour. Pour one cup into a large mixing bowl. Pour in a small cup of warm water. Stir till consistent. Add one small egg. Stir, adding a little bit of salt. Slowly add more flour. Batter should look like bread batter - not a hard consistency. Svetlana's test is that it should stick to itself more than to your fingers.

Knead batter, not by punching it but by passing it between your hands. Cut into three parts, and roll each into a long snake about 1-2 inches diameter. Chop the snake into drop-sized pieces. Roll each piece into a circle. Svetlana's circles are roughly 3 inches across.

If potatoes are ready, mash them. (I would suggest here adding some seasoning.) Put a small spoonful of potato on a dough circle in your hand. Fold it over to make a half circle around the potato. Pinch around edges. If the potato leaks through the edge, the pirogi will explode later. The pirogis should be fat, rather than long, but there is no real rule. Svetlana says every woman's hands create unique pirogis. So, fill all your dough circles. This took us about an hour and a half. Put some water on to boil. Just as it starts to boil, put some pirogis in for one minute. Good pirogis float. When you take them out, run some cold water over them to avoid 'making one pirogi'. Svetlana's dressing for pirogis is onions and salo, and a small bowl of sour cream for dipping.

Variations: Replace potatoes with mushrooms or mashed strawberries with sugar

Diruni (Belarussian):

Grate uncooked potatoes. Add 3 or 4 spoons of flour, stir.
Add 2-3 eggs, one clove of grated garlic, salt, pepper.
Heat up some oil in a pan. Drop batter like pancakes into pan. Brown each side.
Serve with sour cream

Holuptsi (Ukrainian):

Boil some rice with some chives and a little salo or meat. Boil a cabbage for about 5 minutes, until the color is a little brown. Take cabbage out and separate the leaves, and lay them out flat on top of each other. Use each leaf to wrap up some rice as in a burrito. Put holuptsi in a saucepan with a little water, boil for 10 minutes.
Serve with onions and butter, dip in sour cream.

Smachnoho!