I closed the top of the blender. "She is." I turned it on and silence fell once again. After about thirty seconds, I shut if off, opened the lid, scraped the mixture down and turned it on one more time to make sure everything was combined. When it finished, I shut it off, and grabbed a large, shallow edged round pan. From the fridge I grabbed butter and added a pat onto the pan and turned the heat onmedium.
While that was cooking, I added ricotta, powdered sugar, lemon zest, an egg and a touch of salt to a mixing bowl. Before I started stirring it together, I looked at Martin. "Any objections to a raw egg in yourfilling?"
Martin shrugged. "Safe enough, Isuppose."
"I get these from Walker's farms. His chickens are magical." My lips twisted and I let out a laugh. "Maybeactuallymagical, but what I meant was I've never seen healthier chickens. All of them are out of their pens wreaking general havoc around his house. You practically have to be a ninja to get inside to pay foreggs."
Martin smiled. "Seems like you really go the extra mile to get goodeggs."
"Delicious food is the product of the ingredients you source. I like food, Martin, so I make an extra effort to ensure I only buy thebest."
A wide grin stretched his mouth as he pretended to pull out a notebook and scratch something on the imaginarysurface.
"What?" Idemanded.
"Katie Harper is a food snob," he declared and punctuated his "notes" with a stab at the paper. "This is the column of Things I Didn't Know About Katie, versus the things I doknow."
I snorted. "Which one iswinning?"
He pretended to consult his notes. "Ah, definitely things I didn'tknow."
"I also have a black belt in Karate," Igrowled.
Martin chuckled as he pretended to write. "Also, Katie threatens people with violence on multipleoccasions."
I let out a surprised laugh and began to stir the filling. "Jerk," I said with noheat.
He grinned at me, dark eyessparkling.
The butter snapping in the pan made me turn away. I flipped open the spout to the blender and poured the first blintz into the pan. I let the conversation drop because I couldn't concentrate on these and talk at the same time. Blintzes were a little trickier than a pancake. They were much thinner and required a deft hand to keep them from breaking. I successfully flipped the first one onto the plate, turned and stuck the filling in the fridge and got to work on the nextfew.
Within five minutes, several of them were ready to be filled. I asked Martin to get the ricotta mixture out of thefridge.
"Want me to fill them?" heasked.
I looked at him in surprise. "Sure. I can take care of the rest of these while you do that. Just don't fill them if they're too warm. The filling willmelt."
He gave me a mock salute. "Gotit."
I busied myself making the rest of them and when the last of the batter was poured into the pan, I turned and found Martin had filled all but a few. I smiled in delight as I grabbed a lemon from the fruit bowl and a zester from the drawer by the stove. I set them down, grabbed the powder sugar and sprinkled some over them and zested a little bit of the lemon onto each. I pushed the first plate over to him, offered him a cup of coffee which he accepted, and went on to makemine.
"Oh my god, Katie," Martin mumbled as he took the firstbite.
I sipped my coffee and grinned at him. "Good?"
He stared at me like I wasinsane.
"Good?" he said with a choke. "These are amazing. Also, how have I never had blintzesbefore?"
"I think they're mostly an eastern coast food. No one in the south has ever heard ofthem."
Martin blinked at me. "You'vetraveled?"
I nodded and cut a small piece of my breakfast. "Before I settled here, I traveled all over the country. It was wanderlust, I guess. I wanted to see the world before I fully committed to stayinghere."
"Did you likeit?"
I hesitated. On one hand, I'd loved it. "The human world is strange to me. They're so driven to work, work, work. Success is at the forefront of a lot of their minds. But another portion of them is content to let the world hand them everything. It's a very strange and at odds way to live. The successful ones are angry at the content ones because they feel like they're giving things up to them while the content ones think the successful ones should relax more. I think they're constantly angry at one another and cannot effectivelycommunicate."
