PUNXSUTAWNEY — Many are familiar with Ukrainian woman Marta Ingros for her baked goods business based in Punxsutawney. Recently, though, she has gained popularity for her creative twist on another food item — pierogies.
Marta left Ukraine to come to America in 2011, leaving everything she knew behind. Shortly after opening Marta’s Cakes and Cookies in 2012, she had the idea to make and sell pierogies.
“One of the few non-clothing items Marta packed into her suitcase were her grandmother’s pierogi, ‘varenyky’ in Russian, molds,” Marta’s husband, John Ingros, explained, noting that this is a traditional stuffed pasta found in Ukrainian and Russian cuisine, just as pierogies are in Poland.
Initially, Marta was preparing pierogies for family holiday dinners.
“My brother-in-law loved them so much that he shared them with his Slovakian family members in Punxsutawney, who then encouraged Marta to make and sell them locally,” said John.
At that time, though, Marta was fully immersed into her bakery business, with no time to dedicate to another food realm.
She can remember growing up and helping her mother bake, eventually beginning to bake herself, and always being artistic. Marta’s Cakes and Cookies is run out of the Elk Street kitchen her husband built for her.
Over the years, she’s has become locally famous for the meticulous and customized details she adds to cookies and cakes for birthdays, weddings, just about any occasion. She has enjoyed being a part of these special moments and memories in her customers’ lives.
Eight years ago, the couple considered operating a food truck or trailer, but neither had the spare time to devote to it, John continued.
In 2022, Marta began clearing her bakery schedule to test the local market’s demand for freshly-made pierogies, setting aside one day each week to make them — Wednesdays.
The name “Marta’s Wednesday Pierogies” came from a customer who referred to them one day as her “Wednesday pierogies.”
Through Facebook posts circulating and word-of-mouth, the local fanbase for pierogies continued to grow each Wednesday. By mid 2023, Marta went back to the idea of a food trailer.
“After much research and consulting with others in the mobile food serving industry, we contracted with a well-known food trailer builder in the Miami area to construct Marta’s trailer with the cooking equipment and layout exactly as she wanted,” said John.
Her vision included the trailer’s design depicting various ethnic foods, as well as the national flags of Slavic countries where pierogi/varenyky is popular, including Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. The trailer features a good friend of the Ingros’, Alexia Matts of Punxsutawney, posing for a photo in a traditional Ukrainian costume.
The Marta’s Wednesday Pierogies trailer debut was at the second annual Ethnic Food and Music Festival in Indiana on June 15-16. It has since been traveling around the area to serve at different locations and events, known for Marta’s unique pierogi flavors like taco, blueberry, jalapeño, deep-fried Oreo, buffalo chicken, smoked cheeses, and many more, as well as freshly-baked breads.
Marta is committed to using fresh, natural ingredients and a variety of fillings for her pierogi dishes. This has also been an opportunity for her to cook dishes she loves alongside her family, as her mother, Juliet, and cousin, Alina, are both also residing in Punxsutawney as refugees from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
“They help her with creating the various flavors of pierogi, making haluski, stuffed cabbage and other ethnic foods.”
In addition to pierogies, haluski, stuffed cabbage and kielbasa, Marta will be rotating other ethnic dishes into the trailer’s menu, including Chicken Kiev, Russian-style pork stuffed potatoes, shashlik, pagach, etc.
She is working to schedule mainly weekend events through October of 2024. Being that her bakery calendar is heavily booked, the trailer is a family effort, with Marta relying on John and her daughter-in-law, Ala Ingros, as well as a family friend, Frank Hill, to run it on days where she has bakery obligations.
In 2025, Marta plans to clear more dates from the bakery calendar in order to attend more festivals and other events with the pierogi trailer, a unique niche in the food-truck world.
In a previous Courier Express article, Marta had noted how hard it was to leave her home country to live in Punxsutawney. But, the support she has received since nestling in there has been overwhelming. The pierogi truck has been another step in getting to know more community members and having more socialization.
“Marta is definitely a people-lover, and meeting with her pierogi shoppers each Wednesday has been such a joy for her,” John said. “Working on the trailer will provide more opportunities for her to make new friends in new towns, while sharing foods that she loves grew up with in Ukraine.”
For more information, follow Marta’s Wednesday Pierogies on Facebook: www.facebook.com/p/Martas-Wednesday-Pierogies-100092489013433/ or call 814-427-8082.
