Heading to Shavuot

Although the Torah commands us to count the Omer, the fifty days between Passover and Shavuot I have never ever managed to actually count all of the days. My husband jokes that we always get the first day right ( because it takes place during the second seder).  This year I did better than I do most years because one of my  Facebook friends has posted the day of the Omer (most days).

Although I am lax about counting the Omer, I am pretty stringent about serving dairy on Shavuot. My elementary school teachers told me that the reason we eat dairy is that in anticipation of receiving the Torah the Jews knew there would be rules about which meat is Ok to eat and which is not acceptable. In order not to break any of the rules they ate dairy while awaiting the Torah.

Even as a kid I knew there was something just a bit hinky about the logic in that explanation. a couple of years ago my friend Debbie, always a great source of wisdom explained to me that in Eastern Europe dairy animals calved around Passover and would be weaned before Shavuot. Milk was plentiful and cheap. it made a whole lot of sense to eat dairy for this holiday.

Even with the hinky reasoning I adore eating the traditional dairy Shavuot foods.

 I have been pulling out this card with Adele's recipe  since the early 1980's. I made the bletlach, the pancakes yesterday.

Today I planned to fill and fry the blintzes. This is more or less what went into the filling. I left out the cottage cheese, added an egg some sugar, salt, vanilla and some chopped candied orange peels.

I had unfortunately undercooked several of the bletlach so many of them tore and were unusable.

I thought about my mother. I thought that if my mother were in an identical situation she would start cursing. Although I generally do far more cursing than my mother did, I didn't curse as bletle after bletle tore.  I had just a few blintzes made and a big bowl full of blintz filling.

This was just one layer of blintzes, I think I made about 30 blintzes altogether, this was quite short of my goal.

I thought about a recipe from the Charleston, South Carolina synagogue cookbook for a blintz souffle that was made out of blintz filling between two layers of batter. I  thought about the lump of noodle dough I had in the fridge waiting to be turned into Cholesteral Death Kugel. 

I rolled out two thin layers of noodle dough. I lined a baking pan with one of the big noodles. I topped the noodle with the rest of the blintz filling and topped the cheese with some frozen berries. I then topped the whole thing with the second noodle and baked this vaguely Eastern European hybrid of a kugel and a lasagna.

While this was sort of an invention of desperation, I am sure that someone's Bubbie made such a dish and I am sure that this was the traditional Shavuot dish back in some shtetle.  I find that if  make up a plausible  name for a made up dish my guests eat it more eagerly. I am open to your suggestions.

Earlier today I went out to buy food. it was raining but the plants put out on the sidewalk by the local florist and the plants planted in front of some of the buildings in the neighborhood looked beautiful in the rain.