Polish Cheese Crepes

Rick's Polish Cheese Crepes with MJA Winery's Rose

In Death of a Foster Child Rick Podowski, his wife Elaine and the Hefty Trio (Erin McGinty, Teresa Spinelli and Leti Rios) are sitting in the living room discussing the brutal death of Rick and Elaine's former foster child.

            "It doesn't matter," Erin interjected, her face growing red with anger. "The reality is that the cops don't think that way. Because the girl lived in your home, you automatically became a suspect."

            "But that doesn't make sense," Teresa said. She was the oldest of the three and had a veneer of calmness. "It's not Rick's fault that someone stabbed her to death."

            "I think that I can speak for all of us," Leti said. "The police are suggesting that you broke the rules as a foster parent when she was in your home and that had something to do with the girl's death."

            After another twenty minutes of talking, it was, they all agreed, time to take a break from speculating about what would happen, particularly since it was clear that Rick was becoming more upset by the moment. It was, as it usually was in moments of tension, time to eat.

            "The cheese crepes are ready," Elaine said as she placed the dish of beautifully browned Polish crepes, plates, forks, napkins, and a bottle of MJA Rose on the coffee table.

            "I usually don't drink rose," Leti said. "But this one is full of the flavors of strawberries, cherries, and peaches. Great choice."

            "MJA is a new winery in our area," Rick said, since he was always ready to talk about his favorite topic. "The owner made his fortune selling Kona coffee and then he turned to growing grapes and producing wine. When you go to the tasting room, they serve chocolate covered coffee beans with the heavy reds."

            "I love these crepes," Teresa said, dabbing a napkin to her lips. "The taste of the cream cheese and vanilla is outstanding. Thanks for making such a great dish, Elaine. We can always count on you."

            "The recipe is from the website of Rick's favorite Polish restaurant," Elaine said as she took another sip of wine.

            "Polish crepes out do French crepes every time," Rick said as he tried to continue to be the center of attention.

            "I agree," Leti said. "But the best are Mexican crepes made with cajeta. The creamy caramel made from goat's milk makes them soooo good."

            The room went silent as they began to eat, an occupation, which they always took very seriously.

            It was a Friday night, and most people would simply be celebrating the start of the weekend, but here were three people coming to the aid of their two friends. No matter how difficult things became in terms of the death of the foster child, the five of them would remain united and strong.

Rick's Polish Cheese Crepes with MJA Winery's Rose

Unfortunately the Bona Polish Restaurant is no longer in business. However, these crepes are just like the ones they served at Bona.

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups of milk

3 tablespoons water

1/2 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Make the dough by beating the eggs until they are light. Add milk and water and beat again. Next, add the remaining ingredients and scrape sides.

Heat a small frying pan and then coat the pan with one melted tablespoon of butter, add 3 tbsp. of batter and roll it around to make it even. Cook over moderate heat. When the crepe is done, remove it from the pan and continue making them until the batter is gone.

Filling

2 cups of cottage cheese

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons cream

pinch of salt

vanilla

2 tablespoons sugar

To make the filling, mix all of the ingredients together and put 2 heaping tablespoons of the mixture on each crepe. Roll up in a jellyroll style. Place filled crepes in a buttered pan and cover with foil. Put the pan in a 250-degree oven for 30 minutes. Dust with a little brown sugar and serve with sour cream.

Serves 4

MJA Vineyards

Marin Artukovich, MJA Vineyards' owner, comes from Croatia where he grew up with his relatives making wine and having a wine cellar and barrels in his own home. He got his start in the Kona coffee business in 1990 by purchasing a coffee plantation high in the Kona Coffee belt in Hawaii. After sixteen years in the business, having decided to move to Napa Valley to focus on wine, he bought an estate on the side of Howell Mountain where he is now producing and marketing his own wine. Artukovich purchased a vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the new MJA Tasting Room was opened in March 2010. He started planting Pinot Noir on the vineyard property in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the spring of 2011.

MJA specializes in Napa Valley Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc and Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir. They produce about 3500 cases a year.

An Adopted Teenager And Her Mother Find Each Other

Since February is the month for love (and groundhogs), I am not going to publish a recipe and wine pairing, but rather I want to focus on a rekindled love when an adopted teenager finds her birth mother. This excerpt is from The Winning Certificate and it appeared in the literary magazine at Sylvia's old high school.

Reunited

By Sylvia Medina and Jenny Leyton

I'm the luckiest person in the whole world because at age seventeen, I met my birth mother. Just days after I was born, two very loving people adopted me, and I grew up knowing them as my parents. When I was fourteen, my adopted mother died and through a series of events at age seventeen, I was able to meet my birth mother. We are going to share our feelings with you in the following stories. 

 Sylvia speaks

What's it like to be adopted? I'll tell you. It's about feeling empty. I can remember reading lots of children's books about one species of animal raising another species and then asking my parent's lots of questions. Finally, when I was ready, they told me that I was adopted. I had lots of questions about my birth parents, but it didn't become a major issue until my adopted mother died of cancer. Her death triggered everything. It happened right before I entered Central High School, and throughout the summer, my depression morphed into anger. Why had my birth mother abandoned me? Why hadn't she loved me enough to keep me?

When I entered Central High School, I had a huge chip on my shoulder. Since I wanted to feel important, I joined a crew and changed my physical look. I wore dark clothes, had a ring in my eyebrow and I streaked my hair. When I was with my crew members, I felt empowered and when someone dissed us, we would beat that person up. It's hard to believe that I took any part in that now, but I guess we felt that was the only way we could get some respect. But we never really felt as though we belonged. It was a badge of honor to fail all of our classes, and we just laughed whenever we were suspended. We always sat in the last row of the classroom pretending to be asleep. No teacher was going to tell us what to do.

Although I didn't want to hurt my father, I knew that my behavior caused him so much pain. I tried to change, but this huge hole in my heart remained unfilled. When other kids talked about their families, I felt ashamed because we really weren't a family and it was my fault.

My relationship with my friend, Rosita, helped me to come to grips with my pain, and being on the staff of the literary magazine helped me to understand that I had something to contribute to society. When students discussed my poems, I felt the loneliness subside. My grades improved and I no longer needed the crutch that the crew provided. Little by little, I was able to reach out to others. I stopped streaking my hair, took out the eyebrow ring, and started to wear colorful clothes. This was my rebirth. Rosita encouraged me every step of the way.

Then, as I said, I was able to find my birth mother, and last summer we moved to Purchase, New York to live on her farm. Everything was perfect for the first month because she let me do anything I wanted. After that, she became like my adopted parents. Clean your room. Take out the garbage. I had chores to do, and I was punished for misbehaving. I miss everyone at Central and it's been very hard getting used to the weather here in New York. I'm happy to be with my birth mother, but life is not perfect. Yet, I would not give up this life for anything in the world.

Jenny speaks

I was a very young college student at Stanford and I had no way to support my daughter so I had to give her up for adoption. But I thought about her every day of my life and I can't describe how painful it was not to know whether she was safe and well. I kept asking myself what I had done. What was she doing? Where was she living? Was she happy? I wanted to know, yet, I was afraid to find out. And there was another possibility. What if, once having found her, I discovered that she hated me for having let her go?

I married an older man, and we never had children of our own. I did take care of his sons from a previous marriage, and I didn't do a very good job. They were always in trouble with the school authorities or with the law. Even though I was a software engineer when I met my husband, I never had the confidence to go back to work.

It was a miracle that Sylvia's father and I happened to begin to correspond. As a result of that Sylvia came to visit and suddenly I had my daughter back. I remember that day so vividly. This beautiful girl arrived at my farm and told me that she was the daughter of the man I was corresponding with and as we talked, I realized that she was born on the same day as my daughter and that she was born in California. After hearing a bit more of her early history, I came to the realization that Sylvia was my daughter. All the fears that I had imagined concerning finding my daughter disappeared immediately. It was a great discovery to learn that we share so many interests and she makes me very happy. She's been here for several months and she doesn't even mind my being strict.

I've had a huge hole in my heart for such a long time. Now it's filled and I'm so happy that Sylvia and her father are living with me. Every day I give thanks because my daughter is here.

Will our relationship have a storybook ending? Probably not. My daughter and I love each other, and we will work every day to make our relationship meaningful. We don't want to lose each other again.