How to Start a Fall Day

Among other things, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed some of our household food rituals. Before, when there were just the three of us, and my son headed off to school before than my husband arose, our breakfast was split: the teenager usually had a bowl of healthy(ish) cereal or fried up some eggs; later, the adults had coffee and avocado toast. Last year, my daughter was born, but for a while her menu was rather – let’s call it – repetitive, and my son was off to a boarding school of sorts, so the breakfasts remained a two-person affair and mostly went along the safe, well-tested route.

In April, however, our whole family was brought back together under one roof during the quarantine, with no one rushing out the door in the morning. The little one, now a year and several months old, surprised me by showing her readiness to eat anything she saw on the table – oh, and our access to avocados was greatly curtailed, so that left me scrambling in my attempts to diversify our breakfast menu.

I had always loved the fritters (оладьи), crepes (блины) and curd fritters (сырники) that my mother made, but she never really had a recipe for them, mixing the batter by feel, and they all seemed like too much effort was required (even though she made the process look pretty effortless). But, forced to provide a varied menu (you can’t feed an 18-month-old scrambled eggs or cream of wheat every day), I quickly learned. I discovered fool-proof recipes for ideal crepes and fritters, and, through trial and error (well, mostly trial) I’ve come up with a сырники recipe that, just like my mother’s, is done entirely “by feel.”