Hanging my head, AGAIN!

I have often said that my son is the bane of my culinary existence. He has issues with textures, most vegetables, pepper and most herbs (anything green). Although, lately he has been surprisingly adventurous in trying some new things. I even see him being a teensy bit interested in cooking some simple things. Mind you, they are some unusual things (a hamburger topped with an egg?) but at least he is trying to expand his diet of Mcdonalds, Ramen and chicken patties.
Believe it or not though, one of the things we do share is a love for Sushi (Sushi? The kid who will not eat ANYTHING eats Sushi????). That is my "go to" thing to suggest when I want to spend some quality time with him. It almost always guarantees a yes and his sister gladly bows out of the invitations (not a sushi fan). We do have some different tastes in Sushi though. I go for the simple raw fish and rice type sushi or Unagi and he prefers the rolls that often are fried and spicy. He will eat a few of the things I like and the rolls that he has gotten me to try have been tasty. I just wouldn't have ordered them without him there because I feel like Sushi is one thing I can indulge in, that I really love and is also good for me, if I get the fried stuff
that is kind blowing that.
He challenged me a few weeks ago to try to make a Lithuanian dish called Cepelinai. Where he found this I have no idea. I scoured the Internet looking for recipes for this and believe it or not I could only find 2(?!?) and they were woefully vague. From what I gathered, this is basically a meatball encased in a potato dough that is then boiled. Hmm OK, I am not going to refuse him when he wants to try something new so I decided to give it a try.
I would LOVE to be able to post some pictures of the lovely Cepelinai resting in a bowl. However what I ended up with was potato sludge in the bottom of a pot with boiled meatballs floating on top. The meat was edible however a little bland. A host of problems came up while making these not the least of which was that I was trying to make them before I went to work that night. I think that another problem was something to do with potato starch. So, I was definitely taken down a notch (or 5 ) in the vanity of my cooking ability. HMMMM Maybe that was what he had in mind all along?!?!?!?