Polish Papal Pierogi Party

Adam turned twenty-four on Sunday! When I first learned that JPII was going to be canonized on his birthday, I knew that we had to throw a party. And there had to be pierogies involved.

The preparations began on Wednesday. This was my first time making pierogies. I wish I had my great aunt Hazel's recipe, but I had to make do with this one from All Recipes instead. The recipes called for eight cups of mashed potatoes. And that sounded like a whole lot of mashed potatoes to me, so I decided to take one of those giant bags of potatoes from Costco and turn them all into mashed potatoes. Guess what? That was a dumb idea. Needless to say, a good portion of our freezer is now devoted to mashed potatoes and we have a lot of shepherd's pie in our future.


Dough: take two. The first time I confused containers and cups and added twice the amount of sour cream.

 
Into the pot. Will they burst open?!?


Success! Now to refrain from eating them for the next two days...


Flour, flour everywhere.

Maybe I should have worn an apron?

On Thursday, we made the dough and assembled the pierogies. It wasn't hard, but it took a long, long time and also made a huge mess. After boiling the last pierogies and cleaning up the kitchen, I think we finally went to bed at 1:00 am. On Friday, I made a tiramisu for dessert, because we couldn't leave out Pope Saint John XXIII. During nap time on Saturday, we made salads (regular and fruit) and put up a few decorations. We went to the vigil Mass so we'd have more time on Sunday for the final preparations. Between the too-close-to-dinner timing and the fact that there weren't a lot of kids there so ours seemed super loud, it was not our finest Mass experience.
 

Adam used this website to print those posters (at work - shh!)

 
Did you know you can get Vatican flags for $5 on Amazon?

I have some living room updates to tell you guys about! Hopefully next week?

But on Saturday night, we went on a date! We had dinner at Adam's favorite Italian place, Frankie's, and then ended up wandering around Target for a little while. Dates right now are kind of tricky. Since I can't even manage to put them both to bed solo, we're definitely not dumping that task on a babysitter. So, we can't leave until 7:00 when Maggie goes to bed, which doesn't really leave time for dinner and a movie or show or anything. But then if we just do dinner, we're done around 9:00 and feel silly going home already, hence the Target trip. I think we'll have to get more creative for our next date, for my birthday in May, and maybe even venture into Seattle. (Adam is not much of a big city person and prefers to stay in our little town whenever possible.)

On Sunday morning, we had croissants for breakfast from our favorite French bakery, set the table, and baked the pierogies and some bacon. Both just needed twenty minutes at 400 degrees. Oh, the pierogies are even better if you brush them with a little melted butter before baking. For best results, you'll want to serve them with sour cream and some sauteed onion. Yum, yum, yum.

The finished product. The platter is from the line Katie Daisy did for Target several years ago. I love it!


Do you like our Pope Francis mugs? Adam's brother, Steve, brought them back from Argentina.

A lot of our good friends here were busy or out of town last weekend, so we really weren't sure if we should even throw this party. But I'm so glad we took a leap of faith and went for it. We ended up having a pretty good group (even a playmate for Claire!) and it seemed like everyone enjoyed themselves. We certainly did!


Maggie was more excited about the wrapping paper.

After everyone left and we'd cleaned up, Adam opened his presents. To gave you a little taste of what Adam's into these days, he got a few seasons of The Middle, a copy of Groundhog Day, the St. Micheal's hymnal, this philosophy book, a statue of St. Francis for our family altar, and some money towards tools/a workbench.

 I think we're still getting used to birthdays with small children. When we were dating and during our first year of marriage, we really tried to make the other person feel special on their big day. But when you're a parent, it's never about you anymore. So, of course, that meant that Claire and Maggie didn't take naps at the same time. And even though I made red beans and rice for dinner (one of Adam's favorites), Maggie fussed the whole time and Claire throw a giant fit because Adam dared to cut up her sausage. 


Not pictured: Claire's confusion as to why every birthday isn't her birthday.

C'est la vie, right? I know our hopes of joining the ranks of those two guys we celebrated earlier in the day would certainly be more difficult without Claire and Maggie around to force us into being a little less selfish. Over and over again.

We did manage to rally and sing happy birthday over some chocolate ice cream. Then Claire insisted on having a candle to blow out in her ice cream, so we had to sing "happy Claire's still two day" to her as well.