I grew up on a combination of Polish cooking and good ol' country cooking.
Some of the Polish favorites:
Pieorgies made the real way - ditch the potatoes and garlic. Make your own basic dough, add cottage cheese, boil and then fry the pieorgies in butter. I can't even look at a box of frozen pieorgies. When I was really little though they were called "Froggies" by my grandparents who taught us the recipe.
We also ate a lot of this thick barley and tomato soup/stew. We called it Jimesetti (completely unsure of the spelling!!) but I have no idea what the original name of the dish is. It's barley, small veggies, tomato sauce, ground beef and molasses. Delicious. It was my choice of birthday dinners for a LONG time!
As far as the country cooking - my favorite is my grandfathers milk gravy. There is nothing better along side a good biscuit, fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Delicious!! Heck, it's even great with Elk steaks - which I have had the pleasure of eating on occassion.
Who else had grandparents who fed them food and only told them afterwards what they actually ate. Mine did that ALL the time. "Oh by the way, how did you like the elk, dove, quail, phesant etc." Can't tell you how often this happened to me when visiting grandma and grandpa *lol*