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So I started a big long post about all the little inconsequential things I have been up to for about the last month, and realized.  Uggg.  Yea, sometimes even I get tired of writing down the silly little things.  If you care, you can read a summary at the end of this post.

But in the mean-time... Inside-out Pierogis.  And for those of you wondering what the heck a Pierogi is... it is a ravioli like pasta that is stuffed with a potato paste filling.  So you might then be wondering what the heck I was doing trying to make Pierogis.  And that is the wrong question.  Because I wasn't.

Pierogis are tasty and wonderful, but just way too much work.  On the other hand, cous-cous is delightfully easy.  Boil some water with a bit of butter and chicken bouillon in it, toss in the cous-cous, stir and take off the heat, let sit for a few minutes and done.  Except when you find out at the boiling point that you don't have any cous-cous.  

What did I have?  Some thin flat wheat noodles.  I tossed them in and added about a quarter cup of dried minced onions.  Which seemed to be making a nice (but slightly strong) chicken-broth-onion-noodle-soup.  Great... but requires an additional bowl to the plate that I had grilled steak sitting on.

Some say that necessity is the mother of invention, but laziness must be the trailer-park cousin.  And I definitely fall into that category when it comes to washing even a single more dish than needed.

So I did what any reasonable person who ate microwave-pot-pies for the last two weeks to avoid extra dishes would do... I dumped in enough dried mashed potatoes to turn the whole thing into a strangely noodle-filled paste.  

The flavor... tasted perfectly of the best potato & onion pierogi I have ever had.  The looks... well... maybe not the most normal thing ever.  But considering the level of complexity it takes to make good pasta pierogis from scratch, and how incredibly easy the inside-out version was (literally by accident), I think it just made it into my very slim list of "things I cook".

Maybe next time I will throw in some ham for a all-in-one-dish version... because inventive laziness can always go one step further.

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As for the things I have been up to lately...

 

 

A couple fun little projects.

I also took down some shirts that I had been collecting since the last time I did some t-shirt bleaching.  And while we didn't have time and tools to cut out detailed stencils like I did before (see this photo album), My niece, sister, and I had a fun time creating patterns for some new shirts.

And in the spirit of fixing little things that bother me, I did get that hole in the ceiling spackled and did a few little projects that needed doing done... 

  

Drilled a hole in a glass fish tank, 

mowed and weedwacked the yard again, 

created a little cover-plate to keep from accidentally bumping the seat-heat on in Mr. Bean, 

 

set up water storage barrels for fish tanks, 

installed fans on the saltwater light fixture,

did several large water-changes on big fish tanks,

 

built a light for the "nose" of the saltwater tank, 

 

built a light for the spare bathroom tank to replace the one that burn out, 

  

 

created a database program that logs aquarium maintenance and emails me reminders,

cleaned algae off the turf scrubber I keep promising to do a post about,

 

 

And some other stuff of even less interest.