How to Eat Delicious Homemade Pierogies

An alternate but equally fitting title for this post would be: How to Cheer Yourself up on a Cold, Wet, Gray Winter Afternoon. You’ll see why if you read on.

I was at home, sitting on the couch, trying to bring myself to work, do some yoga, or just be productive in some way. And I just couldn’t. It was dreary outside; we’d had snow early in the morning, but by now all the snow had melted into sludge. The sun was nowhere to be seen and I was generally feeling bloody awful, pardon the cussing. I hadn’t even the energy to cook! Can you imagine that? “I ALWAYS have the energy to cook, bake etc” I muttered to myself, half heartedly. I was, you see, even too tired and bored to be dramatically panicked by this laziness; I was also too tired to be dramatically panicked by my lack of dramatic panic. This, when I am the sort of person who uses exclamation points more than any other form of punctuation! See what I mean!

Anyway, I found the answer! Delicious homemade pierogies! You see, pierogies freeze well and I happened to find a couple in the freezer. They were basic or classic pierogies, stuffed with potatoes and cheese, made by a friend’s super sweet and part-polish Nana. So I promptly melted some unsalted butter in a pan and heated the pierogies up. I covered the pan at first and set the flame on low so that the insides of the pierogies could cook. Then I took off the lid and raised the heat slightly and toasted the outside a little.

Finally the garnish: I sprinkled some freshly ground pepper on top and then grated on some Irish cheese, Dubliner to be precise. I know, it sounds odd and inauthentic, but it works very well. This cheese is sharp, so it complements the relative blandness of the pierogies. And anyway, anything Irish and anything with potatoes go together in my book 😛 The final touch was a sprig of fresh oregano.

Here’s the end product:

I shall make pierogies myself one of these days, mushroom and cheese ones, and then I shall write all about it.