Having married into a Polish family, I learned to eat, like and make haluski, a regional favorite in the side-dish department.

I still cross paths, though, with some people who surprisingly aren’t familiar with this cabbage and noodle recipe, my aunt from Chicago-land among them.

In my own defense, I may not be the best day-to-day, fix-dinner kind of person, but I do have a couple specialties I can pull off when I’m cooking for a crowd, and I count haluski as one of them.

I recently got recruited to make a roaster of this for a fundraising type event, and this very I-will gesture on my part put me and Better Half on a collision course not only in the kitchen but in the noodle aisle of two grocery stores.

The first thing I did was revisit the recipe – the let me see, how do I fix this. OK. Cook 2 pounds of bacon. Set the crisp bacon aside. Chop two sweet onions and cook them in the bacon grease. (Yes, this is an artery-clogging version of haluski). Chop two heads of cabbage and add that to the cooked onions and bacon grease and add some sticks of real butter to keep things nice and greasy. When that’s all done, boil water and cook five or six bags of noodles. Add the noodles to the cabbage and onions. Stir in the bacon.

Who wants some haluski?

Now granted, Better Half is a good cook, and I do turn to him for quality assurance testing, especially, for instance, when I’m making deviled eggs, and I need a filling check, but there are times when the two of us shouldn’t be in the kitchen together, and this would include during the haluski-making process.

He is inclined to make “suggestions,” and that carried over to the grocery store when I was buying the ingredients. We got into heated noodle negotiations.

Better Half advised that I needed the kluski noodles, the ones in the blue bag, which would have been fine, but there weren’t any. We tried another store. None there either. Is it a haluski holiday, I wondered.

I spotted other haluski noodles, but they struck me as noodle imposters. Then I saw those short, fat Pennsylvania Dutch noodles. Yum! I like those, and I’ve had haluski with them before. The thing about haluski, mind you, is it’s a simple dish with just a few ingredients, but no two recipes ever taste quite the same.

I made an executive decision and bought the short, fat Pennsylvania Dutch noodles.

Better Half walked away. “Do what you want,” he said ever so sweetly, the spousal translation of which ranges from “You’ll be sorry” to “It’s not what I would recommend much less do, but go ahead. Suit yourself.”

Well long haluski-making story shortened, I made like Frank Sinatra and did it my way, deviating from kluski noodles, enduring concerned cooking looks and appeals to allow him to doctor it all up and rescue it with a sprinkle of garlic salt here and there.

At the event itself, word comes that the haluski is a hit.

And a couple sitting near us wonder aloud who is the chef. Do tell.

The kitchen volunteer points to me. The couple gush. Ohhhs and ahhhs.

I knock my knees under the table against Better Half’s and give him a great big happy short, fat Pennsylvania Dutch noodle smile.

“See, people like my haluski,” I said with pride.

Ever the encourager, Better Half said, “They’re just being polite, Janice. Or they’re really hungry.”

I can’t wait to make haluski again next month.

And to go noodle shopping with my husband.