For the Love of Food: Part 1

Valentine's Day -- it's a day about love. This year, I took Feb. 14 as an opportunity to reaffirm my love of food.

I started off the day with some cheese blintzes. Talk about love. I LOVE cheese blintzes. However, I haven't found a restaurant around here that serves them and Harris Teeter carries them in the freezer section, but frozen just isn't the same and they never go on sale. (I rarely buy "fun food" if it isn't on sale.) So I decided to make my own.

A cheese blintz is a crepe rolled around sweetened cheese filling and served with fruit or sour cream. I've made crepes before but I've never been too good at it. This was not my turning point. I botched the first two completely and by the ninth one, I was able to at least get them off the pan but they were all misshapen -- more abstract than round. Think Jackson Pollock meets breakfast.

My other problem is that the filling turned out a bit runny and spilled out of the crepes when wrapped. To assemble a blintz, you cook the crepe, let it cool, put a dollop of filling on it, then roll it up (kind of like you'd roll a burrito) and fry it.

At this point I must disclose that the problems were likely of my own making: I didn't follow the recipe exactly. There were several points at which things were supposed to chill for minutes our hours and those were the points at which I said, "Eh, whatever." I was hungry for breakfast. Ben was hungry for breakfast. All the chilling seemed unnecessary.

I also used a recipe from the magazine Cooking Light. Had the filling been a full-fat version, it might have stayed put better. I think next time I'll try the recipe from The Joy of Cooking.

Despite the drippy filling and the odd-shaped crepes, the blintzes were, as the French would say, "ooh la yummy!"

The food: Cheese blintzes
The verdict: Tough to make, easy to eat

NEXT POST, tune in for more Valentine's Day food tales.