Shavuot- Nostalgia Recipe Round Up

Passover my sister brought me my mother's manila folder filled with mostly recipes ( and a little bit of tax stuff)  Many of the recipes were newspaper clippings of Thanksgiving and Passover recipes that I don't think my mother ever made.

Some of the recipes though were treasures. A few weeks ago I posted an index card written in Marilyn Katz's tidy handwriting of her mother in law's mazta ball recipe. Bubbie Katz died decades ago. Marilyn is now in the end stages of Alzheimer's. Finding the card was like finding a butterfly in amber.

So in honor of Shavuot, here are a few Shavuot classic recipes.

This blintz recipe comes from our almost-cousin Adele.

Adele was my Aunt Sheva's friend who married a distant cousin of ours. Adele was so cool that even if she were not exactly a blood relative we would have been happy to claim her as our own. Adele was the the archetypal sophisticated New Yorker, who went to concerts, visited museums and read every important book and had opinions about everything she encountered. 

Adele came to visit a Shavuot after her husband had died. Adele was not much of a shul going woman. She made these blintzes for us, perhaps when the rest of us went to shul. My mother was amazed that Adele made them from a recipe not from a book but from her head. 

These are excellent blintzes. They are made even more excellent by the memory of the opinionated, sophisticated, cultured Adele.

The next recipe is actually sort of a low point of culinary history. It's a blintz souffle made with frozen blintzes. It's one of those  mid century recipes where you take a bunch of prepared foods and mix them together and heat them up and pretend that it is home cooking. 

Yes it does taste pretty good. But it is a junky recipe. 

The next recipe is an important document. This is the original of Cholesterol Death Kugel 

This is a stunningly simple recipe that is awesomely good. It tastes exactly like the love a mother has for her delightful toddler. My mother always topped this kugel not just with the allspice mentioned in the recipe but with cinnamon and cloves as well. The mix of spices is heavenly. I see that the note mentions the evil canned pineapple/brown sugar topping. Don't go there. The pineapple and brown sugar will ruin this perfect food and turn it into something crass.

The last Shavuot appropriate recipe is this one. 

The handwriting is familiar, but I can't place it. This isn't my mother's handwriting. It looks a bit like my Aunt Sheva's handwriting but my aunt detested cooking so she could not be the source of this recipe. 

 Aside from the mystery source my other question about this recipe is why would anyone make a cheesecake with margarine??? That makes absolutely no sense. It can't be to avoid butterfat.

I don't know if this recipe is any good. I remember my mother making cheesecake with a Graham cracker crust.

I still haven't decided which Shavuot treat I will be making this year. I will poll my eaters and see what they want the most. 

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom.