Allow me to continue the food section of the Kerry Zukus Official Stalker Site Blog, for to understand a geographical area one must understand its cuisine, and THE FOURTH HOUSE most certainly does take place in a very real place, unlike science fiction where I could make all this stuff up.
On the subject of starches, alongside the potato-filled pierogi, there is the thinner, crispier bleenie. Now, for starters, this is one of those coal region food words that has no official spelling. The words themselves are almost always bastardized and mispronounced, so how in the world can we be expected to spell them with any uniformity?
The pronunciation is akin to the Russian “blinis” (buh-LEE-nee), although it bears little relationship to that product, which is more of a thin flour pancake. This, despite the plethora of Russian immigrants in Lantanengo County. Know this when you are in some fancy Russian restaurant “in the city” and, upon ordering one, you get something totally unlike what we call “bleenies” in the region.
In speaking of the blessed pierogi, I mentioned its availability at coal region block parties. Block parties are thrown in almost every town and patch (a patch is a town that is so small that it rarely can be found on any map) in the region by almost every church and fire house. The summer is marked by their existence and the 3 other seasons of the year are that much less for their lack of them.
Block parties are pungent. The smell of hot grease can fill the nostrils for miles, thus making it unimportant if one does not know the location of one. Simply follow your nose.
The food is all home-made by either a devoted Church Lady or Hosey Woman. Even your own mother will rarely cook this well, even if she is one of the aforementioned, because block parties really allow her to spread her wings and cook in the great outdoors, stuffy kitchens be damned.
So back to bleenies. Their closest non-region cousin is the potato pancake. I’ve tasted that delicacy in many Jewish homes (often referred to as a “latke”, like the Andy Kauffman character on “Taxi”) and find that the main difference is the potato to onion ratio. Bleenies seem to contain more onion. Also, bleenies are served thinner, crispier, and greasier. Coal crackers do not diet. If the black lung doesn’t kill us, the food will.
(Now there’s a nice, greasy bleenie.)
Also, unlike our Jewish brethren, we would only consider putting plain old salt (another suicidal additive) or sour cream (ditto) upon them. Apple sauce is not for us. Apple sauce is almost healthy, and thus has no place in our diets.
The great thing about a coal region block party is that one should not only sate one’s hunger while there, but also buy up enough of this kind of good stuff to bring home and eat later. Pierogies can be frozen and bleenies … well, you can eat those re-heated or simply cold. It’s all good.