Buon Giorno, It is a beautiful spring day here in Arizona.  Thank you God for another new day and the opportunity to help other people with my time. Today I have a big stack of Rescued Recipes to taste from people requesting help or to find their lost family heritage recipes with their stories and family nationalities.  Today’s recipe comes from Gene Styles and this is his story: 
              “This recipe is a 125 year old family heirloom that you won’t find in any Ukrainian cook book, unless you can find a recipe called Pirozhki.  This recipe has been in our family for 5 generations and it comes out of a little farm town in the Ukraine called Pet’ro’vs’koye about 80 miles from Kharkov. The town, which was nearly destroyed in WWII, has only 3 buildings standing. The apples, cherries and peach orchards are still there along with an original 400 year old well where people still get water. This is all of the information I could get from my mother, but I know you will enjoy them.”
 
Gene I tasted your original recipe. The dough is very good and light. The filling needs a little help. I made some changes on the recipe to add some flavor and cut the recipe in half.  Hope you don’t mind. Most important it needed salt. Salt is number one in a culinary kitchen to savor food and bring up flavor. How ironic that salt brings back and reminds me of a true and sad story of a long time ago.  I remember being 13-14 years old in 1943-44 during the Second World War when I spent one summer in Iasolo, not very far from Lido Venice with a family friend.  Salt was very hard to get or buy, because all the saline along the Adriatic and Mediterranean sea was contaminated with dynamite explosives. No companies were able to process salt. It was available on the black market if you could afford it. We were supposed to have ration coupons, but it was never distributed properly or in an honest way. That summer my job was to get salt water by the bucket, carry it home and pour the water in a large metal container then let the sun evaporate the water for days until it was all gone but the salt remained. We would then gather it up for the family cooking. Today I come to appreciate very thing I have and work for. For me wasting food or even throwing away a piece of old stale bread is a sin. Before I dispose of it, I kiss it, remembering when I had none.  Hope you enjoy my Rescued Recipes and my true story.  Come and visit me again for more recipes! 
Ciao, Arrivederci,

Love Momma