Oh boy… This did not go smoothly! I chose the pierogi recipe the other evening because it seemed easy (now I know it isn’t) and it had ingredients that I could get easily.

I would start with the moral of my experience: when trying a new (at least new for you) recipe ALWAYS GIVE YOURSELF TIME! Trust me, you’ll need it…

As I mentioned above, the ingredients in this recipe are pretty simple; I only had to switch the white wine vinegar for red wine vinegar as I forgot to check if there was any around – but that's not that big of a deal (is it?). Another change of color happened, as instead of white pepper I used good-old black pepper in the cabbage filling. Somebody please explain me if there is an important, flavor-altering difference here because if there is, I’m already running to get some white pepper for the next ride. Also, here’s another, very important thing I must mention: a large egg. Yep. I have to ask, who’s to say that an egg is actually large? How can we know for sure that an egg, described as large in a certain context, is truly that - an egg large in size? I just thought I’ll put this extremely important issue out there…

So where were we… Oh, yes. This recipe has fooled me. It fooled me into believing, that this is going to be easy. It made me think that we will happily trot through this road together, hand in hand. I believed it. I truly believed it while I knead the dough. I still believed in it when, while shredding the cabbage, I lost half of my thumb to the cause (might I add, shredding cabbage is the curse of Nature on us for acting like we are superior), nothing a band aid couldn’t solve – by the time the scent of the filling was in the air, we were back on our happy track with the pierogi. We stayed on it while I lined up the little circular pieces of dough on the pastry board, and we were still on it even by the time I threw the filled bundles into the boiling water… And then, as the butter started sizzling in the pan, our happiness disappeared into thin air. We weren’t friends anymore. It was over.

And yes, I’m clumsy. Yes, I was hasty. And yes, I probably don’t own the right pan. But this won’t change the fact that the sound of butter sizzling in the hot pan will haunt me in my dreams.

Putting the dramatic tone aside, the pierogies got browned, some more than others (and I’m starting to believe that the magical "golden-brown" color often described by recipes is merely a legend, a deception, a global conspiracy) – it was OK for a first attempt.

Was it tasty? Yes. Will I make pierogi again? Yes, but only after I recovered from our traumatic meet cute.