Now you’re ready to bake. Some people boil, and some pan-fry, but your father baked Wareniki when he showed you how, and so you are going to bake. Take out your vodka, pour two shots into a pint glass, then fill the glass halfway with water and shoot it back, the liquid drawing bulky fingers through your throat, falling in glittering trails down your insides. Melt a stick of butter, and then pour it into the baking pan. Put in the Wareniki, melt another stick of butter, and pour it over top. You’re ready to put them in the oven now. Set the timer for twenty minutes. Believe it or not, you’re mostly done. You only have to cook the meat and make the sauce and heat up some vegetables and set the table, just in time for your hungry family to come inside and sit down.

The front door opens. Ava and Olive enter through the beads. Gemma is frying sausage in the kitchen. She has on a black polyester dress with a pattern of purple waves. Olive goes to her room and Ava carries a bottle of wine. She puts an arm around Gemma’s stomach from behind. “That smells good.”

Gemma tilts her head back into Ava’s neck. “Gonna taste good, baby.”

“Should I open this wine?”

“What’s the opposite of no?”

Ava kisses her. “I’m just gonna change.”

When the sausage is done, you’ll need another pan, one you can cover. Transfer the meat to it and keep it warm. Take out the pint of heavy cream and pour it into the first pan with the drippings. Yup, the whole thing. Oh, is that ever a brilliant sound, a brilliant little flat volcano, calmly roaring in every part of the pan. Stir; admire this.

Gradually whisk in a few tablespoons of flour until it’s the thickness you like. Add a few dashes of salt and pepper, and then do a taste test. It should be more savoury and creamy than anything you’ve ever tasted in your life. If it’s not, you have options. A favourite choice of Gemma’s father’s was to fry up some bacon and pour in the grease, but however you like to fatten a sauce, whether with more butter or perhaps sour cream, that’s up to you. The English term for this is cream gravy, and the Plautdietsch term is Schmauntfat.

Let the gravy simmer. Set the table. Put out salt and pepper, as well as a container of sugar. Clean everything up and take one more shot of vodka; put the handle away in your bag. A melting evening stretches before you in its goodness. Heat up the corn, which is going to taste wonderful with the gravy. When the oven timer dings, put the Foamavorscht and the Schmauntfat and the corn and the Wareniki into their serving dishes and call everyone to the table. It’s okay if Olive comes too, and it’s okay if she doesn’t, though she will. This makes you happy. You have never wanted to cook a meal without a household in mind. And so, for nearly all your adult life, cook a meal without a household you have not. You have spent much of your adult life alone, not cooking meals. Olive and Ava come to the table, and you sit down and explain what you have made. You ladle gravy onto your plate and sprinkle sugar on top of the Wareniki—not too much. Traditional Russian Mennonite food is all grease and cream, you explain. It might seem counterintuitive to put a little bit of sugar onto this, you say. But bear with; it’ll be tasty. And it is.