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Happy Chanukah, everyone! Thursday night I made latkes for the first time.

For years I’ve enjoyed the latkes that Lauren has made for me, but stupid COVID has made certain that I won’t be seeing her this holiday. So I asked her for the recipe, and she linked me to the one on Epicurious as a good starting point.

The recipe says that it takes 45 minutes to make, but that was absolutely not the case for me. Holy smokes. I don’t know if it was just that it was because it was my first time and wasn’t yet practiced at what I was doing, but it took me more than two hours.

The recipe calls for use of a food processor rather than hand-grating. Some of you may be thinking that it took me so long for that reason. Nope! I used a food processor. I don’t think my food processor is small, but I did have to dump out the contents after each potato. I guess it’s possible that I didn’t have to do that, but the container seemed full, and I wasn’t prepared to risk the safety of my only food processor.

I realize now that it’s probably a good idea to register for a new food processor for when Calah and I can finally get married. STOP DELAYING MY LIFE, COVID!

Lauren said that draining the mixture is important. I didn’t do a comparison, but I agree with this assessment.

These aren’t the latkes that my bubbie would make. Those latkes really capture the Chanukah feeling of never-ending oil. They didn’t have the hash brown consistency of these latkes but seemed to be made from like a potato puree, though I’m sure that description is inaccurate.

The latkes were monstrous. Each was the size of a plate. It’s like she was running IHOPP–International House of Potato Pancakes. Massive latkes.

Each was cooked to a different level of crispiness. There were some that could stand up on end. I’m salivating at the memory of that crunch.

She knew that my dad and I loved the latkes, so she took advantage of the strength that she had to make them for us at every opportunity possible rather than limiting it to a Chanukah specialty because she knew it wouldn’t be long until the pancreatic cancer gained the upper hand.

I don’t know if I can replicate those. It’s been nearly a decade without her and therefore without them. If I had the recipe, I don’t know what I’d do. I might try to make them, but I don’t know if I even want to be certain what those are made of. I feel better about them because I don’t know exactly how much oil she used. She may also have grated the potatoes by hand, and I have no interest in doing that.

This all said, I wish she could make them for me again.

I used to make rugelach, and I know I will again. I found a recipe online, modified it, modified it again, and then finally crossed it with a puff pastry dough recipe.

Since I had hotdogs in the freezer, I decided that Friday night would be the perfect time for pigs in a blanket. I swear this was not the result of Trump’s chants of “pigs in a blanket: fry ’em like bacon!” But also yum.

Yesterday I started the puff pastry dough. I used margarine instead of butter because hotdogs, but I trusted the recipe from Serious Eats before and felt it wouldn’t let me down.

It’s a long process. Most of the time is waiting, but there are so many times of rolling it out before it’s finally ready to use. I knew I wanted to let it rest in the fridge till today, and that gave time for the hotdogs to thaw, too.

I pulled this out of the fridge, and it’s solid, so that’s a good sign. But I hadn’t yet cut it to see if the layers were what they were supposed to be.

Well, the layers look pretty good. Encouraging sign.

I was really hoping it would be cold enough today to roll this out with out any problem. I decided to use the cutting board to roll it out and cut it.