Pierogie-making sessions at St. John the Baptist Church in Larksville typically attract up to 50 volunteers.
St. John the Baptist Church photo
Church volunteers make 26,328 pierogies during Lenten season
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Fran Tometchko, at left, works on pinching pierogies with friends Barbara and Steve.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Pierogie maker Bernadine Tarasek, in foreground, works on pinching pierogies with friends Wanda, Audrey and Janet.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Mary Ellen Novick carries a tray of pierogies to the next station in the church hall at St. John the Baptist Church in Larksville.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Ray Motyka, Joe Husty and Ed Walton are three of many volunteers working at a Monday morning pierogie-making project at St. John the Baptist Church in Larksville.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
The pierogie makers at St. John the Baptist Church in Larksville recently finished seven weeks of fund-raising work, during which they made a grand total of 2,194 dozen, or 26,328 pierogies.
If you think they deserve a party, the church agreed — and arranged a feast of hoagies and salads, desserts and Easter chocolate on the final pierogie-making Monday.
On the second-to-last Monday, the Times Leader visited the volunteers and realized there’s much more to this project than simply pinching dough.
By 4 a.m. each Monday during the project the dough makers and potato peelers typically arrive at the church kitchen, volunteer Rose Feddock explained. A machine removes the potato peelings, but people go over each potato to dig out any “eyes” that remain.
Volunteer Fran Tometchko of Edwardsville, a pierogie maker with more than half a century of experience, said she remembers a small group of women used to make pierogies at the church decades ago, and they rolled the dough out with rolling pins.
Nowadays, you might find Joe Husty of Wilkes-Barre working a mechanical dough roller, expertly pulling out sheets of dough and dusting it with extra flour before the dough cutters start cutting.
Husty, incidentally, is one of several pierogie volunteers who belong to churches other than St. John the Baptist. While he attends Sts. Peter & Paul in Plains Township, others hail from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Swoyersville or Dr. Edwards Memorial Congregational Church in Edwardsville.
“It’s something to do, besides sitting in the house,” said a volunteer who was one of about 16 people pinching the dough around little balls of mashed potatoes that had been flavored with cheese and onions
It’s important that each pierogie be properly sealed, because any break in the dough would result in filling oozing out, and you don’t want that. That’s why Teresa Manley of Larksville was “on quality control,” inspecting the pierogies before they were cooked.
“I earn my keep,” she said, before handing a pierogie on a paper plate to a visitor.
“You’ll never have a fresher one,” she said with a smile.