The Goulash-Pierogi Cold War

I didn't have goulash until I got married and my wife made it for us. The ingredients are simple: onion, ground beef, tomato sauce and pasta (elbow preferred). This is where the cold war begins. With these ingredients. 

It started about 18 months ago when we served goulash for dinner. My father, who was in town, grumbled something about how it wasn't goulash but a red meat sauce. He contended that goulash was a meat stew. This after scarfing down two plates and practically licking the plate. Nothing more came of it and we went along with our merry lives. Then a hot spot flared up thanks to my daughter and some pierogis. 

My sweet daughter has a habit of calling things by different names and long ago called pierogis "potato dumplings." She's not entirely wrong but this isn't the time for food anthropology or semantics, so I never made a big deal of it. While my parents were in town, we had them for dinner one night. This is where my daughter fanned the flames with this conversation:

"Yay, potato dumplings!"

 "What did you call that?" my father asked. 

"A dumpling."

"It's a pierogi."

"I know, but I call it a dumpling."

"It's a pierogi."

"Yeah, a dumpling."

This Abbot and Costello like exchange went on for about a minute more. I could sense my father's rising ire from the sink where I was washing dishes. He walked by me to go to his room and growled, "When you get a minute, I want to talk to you."

I looked over to my wife who shrugged her shoulders. 

I went to the senior apartment attached to our house and sat down on the couch across from my dad.

 "What do you know about our heritage and where we came from?"

"Astoria, Queens?" I responded. (Kinda hard to figure out where my daughter gets it from/)

 "I know you are raising your kids Italian but they know nothing of our heritage."

I was speechless. What culture? Blue collar? Middle class? American? I was seriously confused. The accusation stung. Our family heritage is murky at best and down right swampy on my dad's side. But I let him talk and nodded then went back to doing what I was doing. 

Cold war flare up subsided. My peaceful reaction worked. Maybe I really have matured. Then a few nights later, we made goulash again. My father once again walked by while I was once again doing dishes. 

 "What do you call that?"

 "Goulash."

 "Hmph," followed by the same glance I remembered from being a kid that was about to get in trouble. I said nothing and let him go along his way. 

A few days after that someone put up a meme about this very topic and I reposted it on my Facebook page to discover if I was not alone. Nearly all of my friends said they called what we make (B) was goulash and that A (what my father calls goulash) was stew. I felt vindicated. However, one friend that travels to Eastern Europe quite a bit pointed out that A is actually goulash, so I consulted Google and it turns out we're both right. B is known as American goulash. I never did tell my dad but I felt pretty good about it. I'd rather keep the cold war simmering instead of a full out nuclear assault.