The recipe below, courtesy of Mrs. T’s, combines lightly browned apple slices with cooked sweet onions and sautéed pierogies. The dish is topped with a sour cream-cinnamon mixture that smoothly ties the sweet and savory flavor elements together. Think of it for brunch, lunch or dinner.
WHAT’S A PIEROGI?

Pierogi (pee-ROW-gee, with a hard “g”) has many spellings.* But no matter how you spell it, what you get are baked or fried dumplings of central and eastern European provenance.

Pierogies and apples with a side of cinnamon sour cream. Photo courtesy Mrs. T’s.

Pierogi have been made in Poland since the 13th century as a holiday food. Each holiday had its own type of pierogi recipe.
 
*The Polish word pierogi is plural; the singular form is pieróg, but is rarely used since a typical serving consists of several pieces. Alternative spellings include spelled perogi, pierógi, pierogy, pyrogy and pyrohy. Turkish börek and Ukranian varenyky are the same food.

Potato and cheese pierogi with sour cream and bacon garnish (we’d add some chives, too). Photo courtesy PolandForAll.com.

RECIPE: AUTUMN PIEROGIES & APPLES

Prep time is 10 minutes, cook time is 15 minutes.

Ingredients For 4 Servings

Preparation

1. SAUTÉ pierogies as package directs.

2. COOK onion slices in hot oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium heat. Stir occasionally until lightly browned and just tender. Remove to bowl.

3. MELT butter in the same skillet over medium heat. Add apple slices and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon; cook until lightly browned, stirring occasionally.

4. COMBINE sour cream with remaining 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon in small bowl.

5. COMBINE pierogies with onions and apple mixture; toss to mix well. Serve with sour cream.
 
Find more pierogi recipes at Pierogies.com.

See all the October food holidays.

What’s QVC’s David Venable making for Halloween? These ghost shortbread cookies, iced with white chocolate! He shared the recipe with us:

RECIPE: GHOST SHORTBREAD COOKIES

Ingredients

For The Cookies

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT the oven to 350°F. Line one (or more) baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. CREAM the butter, sugar, lemon zest, salt and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, on medium speed. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour and mix on low speed until a dough forms.

3. PLACE the dough on a surface dusted with flour and form it into a flat disk. Wrap it in plastic and chill for 25 minutes.

4. RETURN the dough to the lightly floured surface and roll it to a 1/3’’ thickness. Cut with a ghost-shaped cookie cutter. Place the cookies on the baking sheet(s) and bake 18-23 minutes, until the edges are light brown. Set the cookies aside to cool completely.

5. MAKE the icing while the cookies are cooling. Melt 10 ounces of the white chocolate in the top of a double boiler set over warm water. Stir constantly until completely melted. Add the other 2 ounces of white chocolate and stir until melted.

6. SPREAD the chocolate on top of each cookie with a spatula, and place the cookies on a parchment paper-lined surface (you can use a cookie sheet). While the chocolate is still warm, decorate the cookies, as desired, with the black candy.

 
Here are more of David Venable’s recipes from “In the Kitchen with David” on QVC.com.
  

The “BELT.” Photo courtesy David Burke
Fromagerie.

If we lived anywhere near Rumson, New Jersey, our favorite restaurant would be David Burke’s Fromagerie.
Burke’s cooking team adds a creative touch to everything they serve. Here, the BLT becomes a BELT: a poached egg is added to the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Using a base of buttery brioche toast instead of white bread, build the sandwich and top it with the egg and a sprinkle of chives. You can serve it open face or add a second slice of toast on top.

We followed the Fromagerie decor and piped a circle of LeGrand sundried tomato pesto on the plate (where to buy LeGrand pesto).

The runny egg adds a new dimension of richness to this favorite American sandwich. the mayo: the runny egg yolk will be moisture enough.

THE HISTORY OF THE BLT
While toast, bacon and lettuce have been enjoyed since Roman times, tomatoes came from the New World in the mid-1500s. They were brought back to Europe by the Conquistadors and other explorers.

Tomatoes were initially considered poisonous, enjoyed as houseplants until the 1800s (the history of tomatoes).

At the same time, there was no mayo for the BLT. While mayonnaise sauce was invented in 1756, it was not until years later that the great French chef Marie-Antoine Carême (1784-1833) lightened the original recipe by blending the vegetable oil and egg yolks into an emulsion, creating the mayonnaise that we know today (the history of mayonnaise).

All the ingredients finally came together. Old cookbooks and menus show that BLTs were served as tea sandwiches in the late Victorian era (the late 1800s).

But they weren’t called “BLT.” The earliest recipes for bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches were listed under different names in cookbooks.

Today’s abbreviated name most likely came from American diner slang: “Give me a BLT on a raft,” i.e., a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on toast.

HOW MANY TYPES OF SANDWICHES HAVE YOU HAD?

Check out the different types of sandwiches in our Sandwich Glossary.

Orange you excited by orange milk? Photo
courtesy TruMoo.

TruMoo encourages kids to drink more milk by making lowfat flavored milks in chocolate, coffee, strawberry and vanilla. They’re made with 35% less sugar than the leading chocolate/vanilla milk competitor.

For Halloween, TruMoo has tinted the vanilla milk orange.

Inspired by their Halloween milk, our tip for today is to tint your own milk, cottage cheese, half and half, sour cream or yogurt.

McCormick suggests 12 drops yellow and 4 drops red food color to tint 16 ounces (see their color chart).

You can tint a white cake mix orange with 50 drops of yellow and 8 drops of red.

Chocolate-covered orange peel is one of our favorite chocolate treats. You bite into the refreshing taste of citrus, covered in rich dark chocolate.

Fresh Valencia orange peels are sliced and candied before they are dipped into the chocolate, in a process that takes three days. One taste assures you that it’s been worth every minute.

The 7.25 ounce gift box, tied with a green satin ribbon, contains approximately 25 pieces and is $35.00.

Beyond Halloween gifting, we love to serve these at the end of a fine dinner, with coffee or tea. A couple of pieces are more satisfying; no other dessert is required!