Cooking? Eh.... you could call it that I guess.

Alright, so recently I made home made pirogi ( pasta with mashed potatoes wrapped inside) and it was an adventure! They turned out really good! Warning though... it KILLS your arms. I was able to have a bread maker mix most of the ingredients together well enough, however... rolling it out is the single most intense arm work out I have ever experienced. Seriously girls, want a buff guy? Forget weights! Just get your man rolling out pasta every day and he'll be a muscular beast in no time! Anyway, back to the main point! 

The pirogi turned out pretty well(though if you look up how to make them, remember... roll them really thin, and then a little more after that.) and everyone seemed to like the extra seasonings(cheese, garlic salt and Italian seasoning) that I added to the  potato filling too. So I froze most of them and saved them for a later dinner and decided what sounded REALLY good was mozzarella and spinach stuffed chicken with the pirogi and a cream sauce. And the meal I created was good... ish.

 The problem that I encountered was more a matter of my own big head and... I'll say it... laziness. You see... I had some ways to cook the chicken that included spinach chicken and cheese, however I knew WHAT I wanted and HOW I wanted to get that effect.... so I improvised... Ugh. Just for your information, unless you KNOW what you are doing... cooking and improvising can be very very dangerous. 

I took the boneless chicken breasts, sliced them into thinner portions, then made the mozzarella spinach mixture(it was supposed to be feta, but surprisingly this wasnt the part that blew up in my face! It worked good!) and then in a frying pan I fried some garlic and diced onion in olive oil and butter. Once it was browned, I set it aside to cool and started rolling the chicken with the mixture... which is where my problems started. 

Apparently if you are rolling chicken around something and cooking it, it's better to tenderize the chicken first (or FLATTEN IT WITH A MEAT HAMMER LIKE THOR OF THE KITCHEN ) the chicken first. Hehe. Who knew? ... Ok, ok, so honestly I figured it'd work better but I was in a hurry and I figured "Hey, it can't be SO hard" .....  Yah. When I say that people, you better buckle up cause it's about to get CRAZY difficult. So after stuffing the first piece of chicken like a Christmas turkey with the cheese mixture I tried to fold it over and seal it with toothpicks... needless to say, it didn't work. By the time I got to the last one I had actually managed to fold the piece chicken with a smaller amount of the mixture and use only TWO toothpicks... but the first four out of eight somewhat resembled hedgehogs.

So after that I put the garlic and onion oil on to heat and tossed the chicken in... putting the top on. Those of you who actually KNOW how to fry chicken please dont laugh. I didn't think that it would retain ALL the moisture and end up with so much liquid in the pan that it was basically boiling the chicken. Thankfully my mom pointed that out and, after taking the top off of the fry pan, the chicken began to fry... finally! It was only a short time after that it was ready for eating.

So the end result was really tasty, but truthfully very dry. It had been cooking for almost an hour because of the whole "boil" thing so my first advice is to say ... DONT COVER FRIED CHICKEN WHEN YOU ARE FRYING IT!... It doesn't work. The garlic and onion fried in oil actually made the chicken really tasty, even without breading, so I give that thumbs up! However... if you are going to stuff the chicken... either use much, MUCH bigger pieces or pound that baby into a taco, because the ones that I did stuff satisfactorily full of the mixture lost most of the cheese when cooking cause it wouldn't close and they were really nerve wracking to eat because there were so many toothpicks in them. The ones that I managed to make "proper" barely had anything in them and might as well have been plain fried chicken. 

Other than that I made a cream cheese sauce that was super easy and only required melting cream cheese in a pan with butter and adding milk and a little garlic. The sauce was actually DELICIOUS on chicken, however the pirogi I felt could have used something a little more savory and less cream cheesy.  I do plan on making fried chicken with that sauce again, however next time I make pirogi, I'd like to try marinara sauce and maybe let them sit out and warm up before frying them so they are a little softer. My family said they enjoyed the meal though and my younger siblings loved the pirogi and chicken! Not an easy meal by any means, however family friendly and if you have either the know how or an experienced cook to give you pointers, it's definitely recommended!
http://greek.food.com/recipe/spinach-and-feta-stuffed-chicken-49414

(what it was supposed to look like. Hehe.) 

Sharpies in all their glory!

Sharpies are awesome. You can use them for tons of artsy things, and my favorite thing to use them for is to draw on my jeans! Now, those of you out there that are like my mom see that sentence and cringe. Do not worry though! I only draw on jeans when they are old and already have that artist look... which is basically final stage of a well used life. 

Drawing with sharpies on my old jeans is just plain fun though. I LOVE drawing, and sprucing up my beloved jeans (or shorts) is a way of having a project and expressing myself at the same time. Now be forewarned... if you give your friends sharpies and allow them free reign of drawing on your jeans, you'll find that they have circled your knee(in hot pink sharpie) and written " TICKLISH SPOT IS HERE" for all the world to use against you. Nevertheless, I love all the comments I get when I wear my "creative" jeans, even if it's from old ladies who share my moms view on drawing on jeans... disdain. 

So, my first pair was simply what I call my "doodle" jeans. I actually only drew about four small little doodles on it and left the rest for other people to fill in. The cool part of it is that it holds so many memories! I have signatures, a fat unicorn, and even a cactus with a hat on those jeans! I love that every time I wear those jeans I can think about who drew that when or how and where. 

The one problem I have with my doodle jeans is that the sharpie sorta... fades.. not really fast, but after about four or five washes red turns pink, and most of the lighter colors are turning back to light blue. So when I decided to get artistic with my four year old jean shorts last night, I was worried that would happen again. With doodle jeans it's not a big deal cause it just makes room for new doodles, gets rid of the tempting tickle spots, and you can always just go over your favorites again with the same colors and it'll last longer. 

The reason I was bothered about my jean shorts doing this though, is because the drawing I'm doing on them is allot more complex and well... cool. So I decided I need to at least try this thing I heard about putting freshly sharpie-ed jeans in the drier before washing them to set the ink. Once I was finished with the drawing the comic book character (deadpool) on my jean shorts I put them in the drier under 'extra dry'. 

So far the red sharpie just bled a little down on the cuff of the shorts and it smells even stronger of sharpie than it did before. This does not exactly inspire confidence though. I do not really want a pink deadpool. Not that I have anything against a female deadpool, however I'm not a huge fan of the color pink. 

So I decided against washing them just yet and washing them with any other clothes when I do wash them. Instead I'm going to put them in the drier once more and try washing them after that. I was hoping to do something else on the other side of the jeans, however I don't have any other colors other than red and black at the moment, so I'm going to wait till I see how this works and go purchase a plethora of colors if, indeed, the jean washes well. FINGERS CROSSED EVERYONE! I will be updating you on if this works or not and perhaps my next sharpie adventure, which I am even now plotting. Bwahahaha! Ya'll have a nice day and remember.... DON'T WASH BESHARPIE-ED JEANS WITH YOUR FAVORITE WHITE TOP.