blue artichoke

I usually make up each week's menu on Saturday or Sunday, and shop for what I need on Monday. Last weekend was cold, so I picked cold-weather food for the week. I didn't plan a big menu, because we were still working on eating all the leftovers on the porch, but I did plan the Wandering Gullet menu. Cold weather calls for hearty eastern European fare; unfortunately yesterday was quite warm. No matter. We had pierogies and turkey Polish sausage. I intended to make a Polish salad, but I didn't have the honey to make the dressing. We'll have the salad tonight. Anyway, the pierogies were just okay. I enjoyed making the dough and filling the pierogies. The filling was quite salty, so I omitted the salt in the boiling water and in the onion topping, and it actually turned out quite bland! I made the pierogies earlier in the week and froze them; I popped them, still frozen, into rapidly boiling water to heat them. I didn't turn down the heat, and I guess the boiling water was too rough because some split open and lost their filling. I think most things are better homemade, but in this case, I think I'll buy frozen pierogies in the future. They're quite good, always turn out well, and aren't time-consuming at all. My recipe made rather a lot of pierogies, so I'll try livening up the leftover with some salt and see how those turn out. (My recipe is from Gourmet, April 2004. The Epicurious site is down right now; I'll try to add a link to the recipe later.)

I didn't get around to cleaning the kitchen last weekend as I had planned. More pressing things came up, like reading the awesome cookbook GC's boss lent me and finishing Christmas shopping. I hate the mall. And it is doubleplusungood at this time of the year. I'm done with all the shopping (yay!); all that is left is the holiday baking, and that's the part I love.

Getting to Know All About You: What's your holiday shopping plan? Early or last-minute?