" Her dough, loaded with butter and sour cream, had risen beautifully. The fish, the dilled rice, the dusky wild mushrooms, the thin blinchinki for the filling layers, had all come out juicy and tasty. Only now, two hours before the party, right before constructing the pie, does Mom suddenly experience distress.

“Anyut, tell me,” she says. “What’s the point of the blinchiki? Filling dough with more dough!”

I blink blearily. Ah, the mysteries of the czarist stomach. “Maybe excess is the point?” I suggest meekly. "

― Anya von Bremzen , Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing