Dairy Dishes

We tramped in, sandy-footed and salt-haired, a fine sweat pushing past remnant streaks of tanning lotion on our lightly baked bodies.

“We’re having dairy tonight,” my mother said, as she nudged us into showers before we could collapse on the sofa.

Set out on the table were fragrant berry soup, hot fruit-filled blintzes and varenikes or oniony potato and cheese kreplach, golden mamaliga dotted with pools of melted butter and scallion flecks, trays of scarlet-edged radishes in paper-thin slices—absolutely everything slathered with a thick layer of cool, rich sour cream. Except the butter. Cold, sweet butter to spread on fat slabs of corn-rye bread, in case such ethereal fare proved too meager to fill our tummies. And before the fireflies beckoned from the falling night, there was warm, sweet cheese-filled noodle pudding with vanilla ice cream.