Under the weather, but still needed to get this one out

Hey All,

What a Sunday....and after 2 beautiful days in the 70sF its snowing again. I spent yesterday in bed, in and out of the fetal position. Initially I wasn't sure if it was a rotten hangover or a stomach bug. Chez 825 did go out and tie one on on Friday. However, today, I contend it is a stomach bug :( I'm still having the chills and hot flashes, and finally broke down and made some ginger-chili tea to calm my stomach. The tea is working its magic, and its really easy. Literally all one needs to do is place some dried ginger and half a dried chili in a tea pot.

Husbear, RN, has been taking excellent care of me. He's been keeping me hydrated with "The Judy Russel Special" (its half strength Gatorade) and picking up the slack with cooking and keeping the house in a semblance of order. He's got a pork bean thing going in the crock pot.....I'm really hoping he'll write me a guest piece on it. It smells great and the little bits I've nibbled on are amazing!

So I never got around to getting this one published. I was busy with the Science Fair, and the stress levels at work this week have been EPIC...and not like happy EPIC. But I did prepare this last Thursday on my way out the door to hopefully coach young scientists to awesomeness....there's a great baseline there. With a couple of easy tweaks a couple of these projects can go all the way.

So what was quick and easy? I opted for Pierogi. Its a favorite of mine, and pretty quick to turn around if you have the frozen ones handy. Thank you NPS for having these on my last shopping trip.

So here's the ingredients:

For the gravy, I decided to go with a modified cream gravy. It was one can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, a cup of prepared chicken and tomato bullion, and 1 1/2 Tblsp (thats 4.5 teaspoons), in the jar for the good ol' shaking technique.

I fried the pierogi much like one would gyoza (Japanese potstickers). A very hot pan, to get some color, but as soon as the dumplings went into the pan, the heat was turned back to medium.

After the pierogi were cooked through, onto the plate. The pan got turned up to high just to get those bits to turn dark brown, then in with the prepared gravy, and back to medium heat. This one required me to stir the whole time, as it kept trying to lump on me.

When I could spare a moment with the gravy, it was off to the freezer to get a dish of frozen veggies, in the microwave and a press of the "magic button" and dinner was ready.

Here's the finished product.

We had a bit of leftover gravy, which found itself a second life as breakfast. I sliced up and cooked some ritzy gourmet sausages I also scored at NPS. A couple of biscuits from the tube, the sausage, an egg over easy, and the gravy. It was just as good the 2nd time around. This picture just doesn't do it justice....it really was quite tasty.