Whether you call them Runzas, bierocks, or pierogis, and whether they originated in Russia or Philadelphia, and whether they are filled with cabbage, onions, and beef, or fish and rice, they are loved by many people all over the world. 

These Runzas remind me of “pasties,” which sparked an extensive discussion in this column a few years ago, lasting 3 weeks, as readers recalled real and sometimes funny stories about them. 

According to the letters in readers corner, a pastie, pronounced like “past” ie, and not paste-ie, is a kind of vegetable and meat pie that the miners up north took into the mines with them for their lunch. Some still do. One man described the pasties as a “pot pie without the pot” or sort of a portable beef stew folded into a pie dough and baked to a golden brown.