Last night I cooked a large serving of pierogis for a group of friends, using the frozen pierogis I manufactured some weeks ago out of that seemingly endless five pounds of potatoes.
As part of my prep, I had spent the afternoon thinking,
just how many pierogis are needed to feed a ninja ladder?
Months ago, during one of our basement parties, a trio of men decided to build a ninja ladder to the basement window notwithstanding a basement ceiling probably no more than eight feet high. Suffice it to say, it was a very compressed ladder that ultimately resulted in some regrettable injury.
Since The Great Collapse of the Ninja Ladder, I had not seen much of the Rungs lately.
The invite to yesterday's dinner started with the Middle Rung. I had encouraged him to invite a friend, so before long, the Bottom Rung was also added. With only hours left before dinner, I resisted the urge to "complete the set" by trying to find the Top Rung.
And then I started the business of calculating just how many pierogis are needed to feed Two Thirds of a Ninja Ladder.
I had a lot of pierogis but the Bottom Rung is a contractor who works very hard on the job and is reputed to eat only one meal a day - a very LARGE meal. A moderate dinner portion for me (after all, I'm only five two and three quarters) would be about 10 pierogis.
For the average boy, maybe double?
And for a hungry contractor - ???
Even assuming the hungry contractor is just an average boy (which he is not):
10 (me, self-described "small person")
+ 20 (average boy)
+ 20 (average boy)
+ 20 (average boy used as proxy for contractor)
= 70.
70 pierogis sounded like a lot! My calculations reminded me of a college interview I had with a reputable consulting firm in which I carefully and painstakingly estimated that the number of AA batteries used in the US per year was roughly...
...a jillion.
(I ended up going to law school instead.)
Half an hour to dinner, it turned out the Top Rung was watching football with the Bottom and Middle Rungs, and it was as if God had spoken to assemble the entire Ninja Ladder. At that moment, the urge to complete the Set won me over, despite concerns about the pierogi population. The boys said 10-12 pierogis per person would be enough, but as a former dumpling-eating champion, I knew this would be a drastic miscalculation. I decided I would simply make LOTS OF PIEROGIS and let it be a free-for-all.
The problem with putting LOTS OF PIEROGIS in one pot to boil is that pierogis, like wet laundry in a dryer, must tumble freely.
A standard pot can handle a pierogi count in the high teens but probably no more. The pierogis also must be added carefully one by one, "swishing" each as it enters so as to not allow it to stick to the bottom of the pot. During boiling, a gentle stirring is needed to keep them in movement, or else they may find it irresistible to stick to each other. (Here I use my Magic Wand utensil, a Chinese favorite, to stir gently and also to ladle them out while draining at the same time.) I would also advise anyone making pierogis from scratch to leave the dough thick enough to withstand the occasional jab of a cooking utensil or rough contact with a fellow pierogi. In my haste to use up as much potato filling as possible, I may have pushed the pierogi envelope a little too far at times. Unfortunately, I was seriously paying for it in pierogi shrapnel.
I had to make another pot of pierogis to replace the fallen, and then another, and perhaps another... by the end of dinner, I had stopped counting.
But to answer the question, how many pierogis does it take to feed a ninja ladder?
Roughly a jillion.
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