Noodle Kugel

I'm inviting people over on Sunday to do a dry run of my dissertation oral defense. That is very nice of everyone during finals/paper writing hell to come to my aid. I have to feed them. I have to feed them well. On the menu is spinach mushroom quiche, blueberry coffee cake, and noodle kugel. TD likes noodle kugel, and has a weird aversion to potatoes. No, I don't know why we're still together.

This Vietnamese-American girl is confident about her quiche making skills (it's the French colonialism thing, bien sur) and coffee cake (Despite TD saying that he has a particular idea of coffee-cake, that is, his grandmother's and anything else is merely a passable attempt, I am usually a pretty awesome baker and will try to beat his grandma. Wait, that didn't come out right).

Help me make Noodle Kugel.

I have looked at 20 recipes, all different, some heart-attack inducing (Balducci's has 8 eggs, 1 stick of butter and 2 packages of cream cheese! Eww!). I have sour cream and ricotta cheese on hand. But more ricotta than sour, which I will use for coffee cake. I don't want to keep buying cheese when the price of milk is more than my t-shirt from Old Navy. What's your suggestion of which heart attack inducing white substance I go with?

Also, I am using dried cranberries instead of raisins. I hate raisins. Like, I really hate them. Almost as much as I hate my university library system that doesn't let me renew books online.

Options: This recipe. Or this recipe. Seems as though ricotta and sour cream are fungible, and I like the creamy non-tangyness of ricotta.

Thoughts?