What in the world possessed me to buy frozen pierogies, you ask. Well, they were "buy one get one free" at $2.79 for 16oz boxes: 220kcal per serving, 4 servings per box, or 12-13 pierogies per box, i.e. 6 pierogies for a small meal which conveniently fits my little frying pan. Not-half-bad a deal. So the first box determined that yes I like them and I figured out how much olive oil to use and that the 8 minutes the box suggests is not nearly enough to brown them from frozen. The first half of the second box I splashed a little merlot in the pan as they heated, which gave them a nice look, aroma and flavor. The second half I tried the same trick with pinot grigio; they didn't taste any different, so I guess we learned a little something about wines and pan-frying.
Got to the gym around 3 to get my run on (session 129): 3.3mi in ~47 minutes. 1st mile at 5.1mph, 1 lap cooldown, half-mile at 6.1mph, 1.5 or 2 laps cooldown, back to 5.1mph until close to the 3 mile mark, then cooldown for the final lap and change.
Since Target was right there, crossed most of the little things off my sundries shopping list:
The black jeans weren't exactly an impulse buy but I still needed a new pair of black khakis, I don't like the fabric of Target's Merona pants, and they have no other brands. So I grudgingly hit up the other, even more egregious giant chain cheap-shit department megastore that sucks money out of communities while ruining biz for mom-and-pop specialists while returning little more than minimum-wage part-time no-benefits jobs. $11 for a pair of office-casual pants is hard to argue with. I probably would have done a lot better to buy the needles and thread there too.
Sundries all sundered, it was time to assemble ingredients for my first attempt at chili. I tried to get it all at Western Beef, but a) their wine selection isn't quite up to Pubilx's, and b) they don't carry Muir Glen canned tomatoes. Turns out Pubilx's stock of MG diced tomatoes hasn't caught up to the expected BPA-free expiration dates anyway, but the canned tomato sauce at least should (likely) be BPA-free. If the chili is a success I'll investigate the Pubilx caddy-corner to the gym on Hillsborough for MG product with expiration dates further out.
Another note about Western Beef - their frozen veggie cases do not keep the stuff closer to the front of the store adequately frozen. I pawed through the few bags of Flavorite frozen chopped onions but couldn't bring myself to go that route, and ended up with a regular fresh onion from the produce dept after all. 'Course I didn't have a proper knife for dicing onions. Fortunately Western Beef also had a selection of kitchen knives at remarkable prices. Hard to argue with $3.79 for an Imusa 8" chef knife too.