Ukrainian

Bleenies were one of the first "indigenous" foods I learned to make on my year on a student exchange in Soviet Ukraine. I wish for the life of me I could recall exactly how we used to make them, but I do recall it was really easy, and not really a recipe per-se but just tossing a few things together. It almost always involved some sort of soured milk product - either something like kefir that had been intentionally soured, or milk that had gone off, which happened a lot with their shoddy milk supply chain.

This recipe is one I got from a Romanian woman who served them at a BBQ she hosted last summer. It is easy to throw together, and pretty flexible too. In fact, the "recipe" she gave me did not really list the amounts of anything except the 1 litre of milk! So I've put some solid numbers on those ingredients in the many times I've made this since then.

• 1 litre milk
• 70 to 100g sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 to 2 and 2/3 cups flour (see below)

A friend on the brewers' list was chatting about perogies today, and in particular about Hunky Bill's Perogy Maker. It's been likely 20 years since I've made perogies - (I once made perogies and Bortsch for 120 people!), which as far as I'm concerned is far too long. I was still due a Christmas present from Melissa so I went out and picked up a Hunky Bill's for just shy of 30 bucks, to give it a try. Next time I'll time how long it takes because I'm not entirely convinced that it's quicker to do. Rolling out the 2 sheets of dough takes a fair bit of time. Aside from that, the assembly is far quicker with the device. But all told as mentioned I'm just not sure it is a time saver.

Note they are darker simply because I rarely use anything but whole wheat flour