This would normally have been a traditional Christmas feast prepared from scratch and served by my mom at Christmas each year back in the day. I've made it for my own made-up holiday of The Weekend after Winter Solstice but before New Years Day or some such bullshit, what does it matter. I had a hankerin' for it so I made it!
The golumpkis are from scratch, the peirogis, not so much (Mrs. T's) but it was all good. Mom would render salt pork and use it to sauté the onions for the filling of the golumpkis but I used butter (as I did for the peirogi sautéed onion topping). Tasted the same yet maybe a smidge less cholesterol? Nevertheless, this meal is by no means considered healthy, despite the use of cabbage.
Also shown is what we called "kapusta" in our family but I found out it's actually only called that by Polish-American families. In Poland and Ukraine it's known as kapusniak (sauerkraut and pork soup). Kapusta is actually a cabbage side dish, not a soup. The version of kapusniak our family made is closer to the Ukraine recipe I found online, further confirming my suspicion that I heard from someone back in the days of my youth that we were actually descended from part Ukrainians rather than full Poles. So was Gus from Ukraine or Poland? Likely he couldn't have escaped as he supposedly did from the Soviet Ukraine since it was much more tightly under the lock and key of the regime than later-day Polish territory.