Aunt Nellie's 80th Birthday, 1999 . . . and PRUNE PEROGIES

            In 1931, Nellie went to school, but the year after that the school was closed because there wasn’t any money in the treasury.  So Nellie maybe never even finished grade 4.  She was sent out to work.

          Nellie had to go to work when she was only eleven or twelve years old because there was no school nearby.  She always came home for Christmas except for one year.  That time she cried and cried and said she was for sure coming home for Easter.  Ukrainian Easter coincided with English Easter that year and Nellie did come home.

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            “But she did well with what education she had,” said her sister, Mary.  “She worked in the McLeod Store before she got married and afterwards and everyone liked her.  The patrons liked her.”

            After her husband, Matt, died, Nellie worked for a long time.  She worked in a bakery and she worked as a cook in a hotel.  One day she was at the bus stop in Dauphin when the woman who was running it spotted her. She knew Nellie and she just happened to be interviewing women for a job in the bus stop restaurant.  She didn’t hire the woman she had just spoken to; she hired Nellie. 

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Marilyn said:  when Jim and Laurie took her out for breakfast in Vancouver,  she saw the price for her breakfast and said "What I could have fed all of you for that price.... and enjoyed it!" 

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Manitoba Hotel in Dauphin: gone now in a fire

Sept 19, 2014:  Marilyn wrote

Mom worked here for a year, not sure how long,  This is where the Manitoba Hydro people in the Dauphin area used to go for lunch for the best soup and butter tarts around!  Bill's friend Malte Mosters was telling Bill when they both worked at Teshmond in Winnipeg how he had been taken to this place where he had incredible soup and pastry.  Bill told him he should have stuck his head into the kitchen and talked to the cook as he knew her!
> Nellie left this place when they wanted her to cut corners and stop making soup from scratch and use Bouillon cubes and stop using butter for her pastry!  She said she was not prepared to do this and walked out!

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PRUNE PEROGIES

My cousin, Lily (Stadnyk) Maksymic makes these a lot!

70 prunes = 1 ¼ pounds = almost 600 g

Boil 20 minutes.

Cool.

Stuff each perogy with one prune.