Eats - Pierogies stuffed with mashed potatoes, ricotta, and onions; Red cabbage; Polish Sausages with a honey mustard apple sauce; Challah.

The whole dinner

Pierogies - Filling:  Boiled potatoes mashed with heavy cream and ricotta, blended with sauteed white onions.  I used this recipe  for the dough. Cut circles, brush with egg, fold in half, press edges with a fork. Sauteed in butter and white onions. (I only used ricotta because I had it, and I don’t need to have large quantities of cheese in the house.  But, it turned out really good. In fact, I think I’m turning the remaining filling into potato pancakes tonight. Yum.)

The pierogies cooking

The pierogie filling

The pierogie dough

Polish sausage - Boiled first in Spaten Optimator, then cooked with apples and onions. Sauce made of honey, german mustard, remaining broth off of meat.

The Polish sausage going into the oven

The Polish sausage

Red cabbage - Sauteed onions in oil, added one head shredded red cabbage, cooked down a bit then added red wine and champagne vinegars and a dash of raw sugar.
Challah with poppy seeds - a friend’s recipe.

The red cabbage cooking

Challah

And since it's a friend's recipe, I'm going to post it as he told me (I've done conversions where necessary):
One kilo (*2.2 pounds) white flour
2 table spoons dry yeast, or 50 grams fresh ones
3/4 cup of sugar (you can do less, but why would you?)
BTW, its for two big hallas, but i think that's what you should do.  It's super fun.  Okay:
1-3/4 to 2 cups of water
2 eggs
table spoon salt
100 grams (*7 Tbsp - almost a stick) of room temp butter.
So now what you do is mix the flour with the yeast in a large bowl (wooden or plastic), then make a hole in the middle of the flour, pour in the water, eggs, and sugar.  Add butter, then start mixing with a spoon, and then add the salt.
The salt kills the yeast, so you add it last.
Then knead for at least 10 minutes.  That's important. I always set an alarm for 15, but 10 is enough. Then you let it sit for about hour and half, and it rises and doubles in its size, and smell really good and yeasty.
Two things - cover the dough while it sits (oil it slightly before), and I know it's cold there - When I made it in Berlin, it wouldn't rise as quickly. What I did was heat the oven to the lowest temp, then close it, then wait 5 minutes, and put the bowl inside....  
After it's risen, divide it in two, then divide each part into three and make long sausage-like rolls, I think they'll be about 8 inches long.  They're supposed to be a bit fat.. you know what a halla looks like....
Now make braids, and you have two hallas.  Cover them, and let them sit for 20 more minutes. Before you put them in, you brush them with one egg. 
Preheat the oven to 180c (*350F) and bake for 35 minutes.
The best way to check, is when they look ready, turn them over and knock on the bottom, if it sounds like a wooden door, they're ready. And here comes the next tip. They might get brown quicker than wooden doory underneath. If they do - cover them with foil (loosely, just put some over them) and all will be well :)

Poppy seeds