Pasta!

Another of our favorite things is food. We had a wonderful day at our friend M's house yesterday making pierogis. Now, I know she has a very detailed blog coming out that has some great detailed pictures and instructions, so I won't steal any of her thunder, but wanted to share a little bit of our experience from my perspective.

First, a pierogi is a Polish pasta (at least that's what I'll call it) that is kind of like a ravioli. Ours was stuffed with potato, cheese, garlic, and carmelized onions (YUM!). So, the brialliant idea behind M's party was to have some friends over, most of us who are also ex pats, and teach us the original Pierogi making process. So, thanks to her for such a brilliant idea! The other outcome was to make sure each of us had quite a few of these delish treats to take home. And finally, at the end of our hard work day, we all got to sit down together and eat these treats with brown butter and carmelized onions over them and baked with real Polish kielbasa (YUM YUM!). Yes, the husbands participated in the eating part. They seemed to enjoy that part very much!

This was such a fun day. We started at about 11 am and were there until after 10 pm. Much of it was spent (by the women, at least) putting together these tasty delights. I learned that I really enjoyed using the hand pasta machine. I see one in my near future! I was really not good at getting the filling in the dough. We kind of worked an assembly-line type process for the final two batches and got pretty efficient.

It was a very fun day, and we have truly made some great friendships with these folks in a very short time. For the women, it felt very old fashioned to be working together so closely on a mutual task, while still chatting it up and learning more about each other. It felt as if we could have been a group of sisters making a big holiday meal or something together all day. So, we have already committed to a similar engagement for Christmas cookies, although do we really want to do that in December, ladies? I guess I can volunteer since we will have air conditioning. We look forward to having you all over and reciprocating such a generous gesture.

And, for those of you out of town, we will have 2 guest rooms (and a study) starting next Saturday! You may want to wait until later September for when we get our crate, though, so you will also have a bed to go with the room! Doggies fly over next Wednesday. And, we're going to sign the papers for the car today. We are getting settled in.