For the past five years I have been lucky to celebrate Christmas Eve with a friend of Polish descent. I adore food traditions, and while I had heard of the Italian Christmas Eve tradition of the Feast of Fishes, I was not familiar with the Polish custom of Wigilia.

Traditionally, the Polish Christmas eve meal consists of multiple courses of white, usually meatless, dishes. The feast begins when the youngest child sees the first star in the night sky.

My friends’ and my Wigilia remains Polish in flavor and snowy in color, though we generally throw in a main course of schnitzel or whole salt-roasted snapper. No matter the entree, something that we simply cannot do without are Pierogis.

They do take some time and effort to make, but the beautiful part is that you can you make them all the way to the final step in advance and stock your freezer full so you have their pillow-y potato goodness at the ready before the holiday season overtakes you.

So, here, a month before Christmas, I give you a recipe for Christmas Eve Pierogi. Call over your some friends and pinch away.