Practice for the Superbowl

My team is in the Superbowl!!!  Go Steelers!!!  As practice for the big game (which, of course, I didn't know was going to happen at the time), we made some incredibly delicious snacks...perfect for watching intense games:


First, fast and easy French Fries.  The trick to these is putting the matchstick taters in cold oil and then bringing the oil to temp over high heat.  As the oil heats up, it cooks the inside of the fries.  By the time the oil is hot, the fries are ready to have crispy, yummy outsides:

What goes well with fries?  Wings of course!  Since we were already having a hot oil fest, we deep fried the little chicken pieces.  Now, this is where the practice comes in.  Our fridge was sadly devoid of the Frank's Red Hot needed to make a delicious wing sauce.  This was remedied by Nick's recent trip to Costco...times two.  We improvised this time with a strange mixture of BBQ sauce, ketchup, butter, and Chinese hot sauce.  Thank goodness Nick went to Costco!

I made a delicious blue cheese dressing to dip the wings in.  We actually had enough to use it the next time we had wings...a week later...using a different method of cooking.  Nick "oven fried" them after tossing them in a cornstarch mixture and leaving them in the refrigerator (or...umm...our garage...).  They were even more delicious than the week before!  Practice makes perfect!

Our next "practice" actually yielded enough for the Superbowl....yummm...the Pittsburgh traditional food of Pierogies!  I ignored my previous success using the simple dough of sour cream and flour found here, and instead used this, more complicated recipe that added eggs to the mix.  I won't make that mistake again!  The dough was extremely sticky and hard to work with.  I made the mashed potatoes and filled the dumplings, but it wasn't easy!

 Steamed in our rice cooker

 Sauteed in onions