Some follow-ups and a dispatch from the land of the weird.

 First, a follow-up on the food I had prepared for Shavuot.

The sweet cheese filling baked between layers of noodles was really good. It is much, much easier than making individual blintzes. It was so good I had to make another which was topped with a thickened berry sauce.  No, you don't need a fancy pasta machine to make big pan-sized noodles. All you need is a rolling pin and a tea towel.

How did I make these noodles? I put three cups of flour in a bowl. I made a dent in the center of the flour and added three eggs and mixed the flour and the eggs with a fork. the mixture was too dry so I added another egg. I then kneaded the mixture for a few minutes until it was smooth. Then I wrapped the mixture in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. (Noodle dough likes to rest between the initial mixing and the noodle forming parts of its life cycle. Thirty minutes is a minimum but this batch rested overnight)

When I was ready to roll out the noodles I cut off a lump of dough roughly flattened it and then rolled it out on a flour-dusted tea towel. A tea towel is one of those dishtowels with a flat weave as opposed to a terry cloth towel. Using the towel creates less of a mess. If you have a staff cleaning up after you you can roll out your dough right on your counter.

I lined my baking pan with parchment paper and then rolled out my dough so it was big enough to cover the bottom of the pan. I used scissors to cut away the excess. 

For the filling, I mixed up the soft cheeses I had on hand. I used about a pound of ricotta cheese, four ounces of goat cheese, and something less than a pound of cottage cheese. I mixed the cheeses up in a bowl along with three eggs and three tablespoons of sugar. I also added a couple of teaspoons of vanilla and the grated rind of a lemon. Once the cheese mixture was all mixed up I put it in the pan over the noodle that lined the bottom of the pan. I then rolled out a second big noodle to top the cheese filling. You can use a completely different mixture of soft cheeses, farmer cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, pot cheese will all work. Yogurt tends to separate when heated so I would avoid using it.

I grated a bit of bread over the top noodle I think I may have sprinkled some allspice and cinnamon over the top. If I didn't actually do that on Sunday when I made this you can do it because it is a nice thing to do. I sprinkled maybe a teaspoon of sugar on the top, drizzles a bit of olive oil, and put it into the oven to bake at 350. 

While my baked blintz thing was in the oven I remembered that last year when I had made something similar the top crust was unpleasantly crispy. So I occasionally pulled the blintz thing out of the oven and sprinkled the top with water. This was an excellent idea.

Blintz pancakes or bletlach are awfully similar to thin noodles in texture. I would totally do this again. The rhythm of noodle-making is much less annoying than that of making all of the bletlach. I also like that all of the fat content is in the all-important dairy fat.

This dish probably was made in some shtetel and has a name. We called it the blintz thing. If you have a better name for it, or know what this may have been called in the old world just let me know.

My husband thought that my barley sheaves looked exactly like chicken feet.

Despite looking like chicken feet they were delicious. We ate fish and big salads both nights of the holiday. It is pretty wonderful to have actual guests sitting at our table eating food with us and not on the other side of a screen.

Today, I got back to work on Todd's tallit and the error I had spent so much time fixing now invisible.

Every project spends a period of time looking like a giant mess. Todd's tallit is now starting to look like an actual tallit.

Once I finish getting all of the stripes affixed to Todd's tallit I will begin on Ale's tallit.

So now-- the dispatch from the land of weird. I went to the local CVS today and was in the process of checking out at one of the self-service cash registers. As I was scanning my stuff, an older woman pushing a granny cart came up to me and demanded that I buy her two packages of gum. I asked her why and she replied that she didn't have any money.

I did have

this new package of gum in my purse. I handed it to her and she told me that she didn't like that kind of gum and I should buy her two packages of gum.  At that point, she had pushed my cranky buttons. I told her to go away.

It felt like the Upper West Side of the early 1980s again. Maybe I will see the man in paint-spattered clothes who used to wear the mesh bags from 50 lb. bags of onions over his face once again.  (I probably haven't seen him since 1988.)