Pierogi Fail

When I was a kid, there was a food and craft fair at the local amusement park every fall that I would go to with my grandmother.  The tradition continued through high school and college, each September I would go home for the weekend and go to the fair with my Gram.  I loved the day and the crafts, but most of all, we both loved the food.  We had a pattern- we’d start with these phenomenal homemade pierogies with onions, and then move on to kettle corn, blooming onion, homemade ice cream, and anything else we could either cram in or carry with us for later.  Far and beyond, the pierogies were my favorite.  They were perfect.  Cheesy potato filling, perfectly sautéed and topped with butter and onions, they were divine.  I would dream about those things at least a month before the fair.  I haven’t made it back to Pennsylvania for the fair in a few years, and I miss those pierogies!  Since I couldn’t go to the pierogies, I decided to try and recreate them.  I found a recipe online to work from and B and I set to work.  We boiled and mashed the potatoes, made the dough, assembled the pierogies, boiled them, and then sautéed in butter with onions. They looked pretty close to the original, unfortunately, they tasted nothing like them.  They were too doughy and greasy; I definitely did not roll the dough thin enough.  While they weren’t terrible, they definitely did not come anywhere close to what I’d hoped for.  B and I didn’t even finish them.  While this kitchen experiment did not turn out well, we did manage to figure out a few things to do differently next time.  We’ll come back and give it another shot another day.  No hard feelings, we can’t get everything right the first time.  A kitchen is like a laboratory, you have your initial attempt and then you change things and learn each time from your mistakes.  There’s no shame in messing up, perfection would only lead to boredom!