Being from Western PA I ate a lot of haluski, a very simple dish of cooked cabbage and egg noodles tossed with butter, salt and pepper. There is a large population of Eastern Europeans there…….Serbs, Polish, Croatians, Russians,etc. Everybody ate haluski, pierogi, halupki (stuffed cabbage rolls), grah e kupus (sauerkraut and bean soup) and anything else they could do with cabbage, noodles or beans.

Of course, my Italian mother dislikes these dishes but she makes them for my Serbian father. Her cabbage rolls are the best I’ve ever eaten and she HATES them!