Kasha da shchi

I must confess that I haven't eaten any shchi (traditional cabbage soup) thus far, or much borsch, for that matter. Two meals a day are provided by my host mother, who isn't a hardcore бабушка (babushka), lunch is a sketchy affair, and when we got out to a restaurant as a program, it's as likely to be Chinese as anything else. I can't say I'm sorry to not be completely immersed in Russian cuisine. I mean, the cuisine is not one of the selling points of Russia, as it is for, say, France or Italy. If you are curious about what Russians traditionally eat, google it. If you are curious about what I eat, read on.

Завтрак/Zavtrak/Breakfast

Here's where I get my kasha. Every morning, there are two packets of kasha (general term for porridge) of the instant oatmeal variety. Tatiana Ivanovna rotates through four different brands (three? five? I haven't been keeping close enough tabs) of varying quality and quantity. She usually makes sure the flavor of the packets match, but lately I've been getting more and more mismatches. This morning, for instance, I had one packet of oatmeal with banana and one with strawberry. No worries, I think those fruits blend well enough.

Along with my kasha is a piece of fruit. I've had bananas all this week, which is fine with me, I love bananas with my breakfast. There's usually a glass of juice as well, and typically a plate with a couple pieces of bread and/or or a stack of biscuits/cookies/some sort of sweet. Bread is becoming less common with my meals – I think Tatiana Ivanovna noticed that it usually goes uneaten. I'm not a big fan of sweets with breakfast, but they go really well with tea, and I'm a hungry-morning sort of person, so I eat the cookies or the, um, пирожное (pirozhnoe). I don't really know what to call any of it in English. Strudel, maybe?

Lunch (not обед [obed], because it's not a three course, sit-down meal)

Lunch is a haphazard affair. Tuesday and Wednesday, I am at Smolny over the lunch hour. I either pack something to eat or go out or get something from the café on the third floor. If I bring something, it's usually dried fruit and nuts to snack on. For example, I found some REALLY palatable figs the other day, more delicate and softer than anything I've had in the States. I also bought some mediorce dates and some old peanuts. But if I want something more substantial, I can bring some sort of sandwich. Last Tuesday I brought black bread with hummus (Патэерсон [Paterson], a chain supermarket, more upscale, sells the stuff, to my delight) and sliced tomato. I also have peanut butter to make PB&J, but I am hesistant to draw on this finite resource.

The third-floor café sells a variety of hot dishes, from macaroni and sausage (т.е. hot dogs) to греча (grecha – buckwheat) with fish covered in smetana (light sour cream), bread and fried. This dishes are displayed behind glass and reheated in a microwave upon purchase. I try not to think about how long any given dish has been sitting there. I mean, I can't imagine that the case is refrigerated. I usually stick to rice with vegetables or one of the salads. Note: salads in Russia rarely, if ever, include lettuce. Salad means diced vegetables, pickles, peas, shredded carrot, etc. And they are small, about the size of your fist.

The café also sells пирожное, of course, with apricot or cabbage or some other sweet filling. People on our program buy a lot of Ritter's Sport's chocolate. Forty rubles for 100 grams, man! I bought a lovely pear once for fifteen rubles (sixty cents), and a banana for the same price, but then I realized that I could buy a banana at a магазин (magazin – store) for six rubles. I could probably get them even cheaper at a рынок (rynok – market), come to think of it.

There's good eating in the neighborhood, for sure. In fact, on the same street, there are two branches of the vegetarian restuarant called Тройский Мост. I ended up there several times in the first couple of weeks because two of my program buddies are vegetarians. It's cheap good food, with a lovely selection of salads, including салат из баклажан (salat iz baklazhan – eggplant salad), tasty, but heavy -- sold by the weight, my friend, and I like to keep my lunches around a hundred rubles.

Ужин/Uzhin/Supper

I'm always exicted for supper because usually I'm home late. My three night classes end at eight, figure half an hour to 45 minutes for transportation, and I'm usually not home before nine. So I'm def. hungry and looking forward to the HUGE portions that Tatiana Ivanovna serves me. Suppers consist of a starch, a vegetable dish, fruit, and some sort of sweet. Let's get some lists going:

Starches (from least frequent to most): rice, pasta, grecha, but mostly potatoes – boiled, fried, but most often instant, sometimes with mysterious chewy bits.
Vegetables (not all inclusive): boiled caulifower, bean sprout salad from a can, peas and carrots from a can, frozen vegetable mix, squash cooked with onion and tomato -- now that was a dish that lasted two glorious days, oh it was so good. At first I thought Tatiana Ivanovna was cutting up melon into the frying pan, and I expressed my surprise. Then she informed me that it was кабачок (kabachok – my dictionary defines it as «vegetable marrow,» but at the time I understood it to be squash). And then I felt like an idiot.
Fruits: orange, слива (sliva – plums, which are smaller and oval; tonight I had seriously tiny ones grown locally), apple – I've had but one decent apple while here. Usually I get small, flavorless apples with the texture of an overused pillow.
Sweets: I only want to mention хавла (khavla), a sort of pressed sesame seed paste cake. Ok, that sounds terrible, but seriously wonderful. It's one of my favorites, up there with the dense, round cookies that dip so nicely in chai and the small pies discovered just today during a break in Stalinist Culture Before WWII. Grandma, it's like they took one of your pies and shrunk it down to size of half a tennis ball, the crust and filling are so good.

Overall, my sweets consumption has increasd alarmingly and my pizza consumption has dropped from its dizzying heights over the summer to approximately nil. Spices are a rarity, the major players being salt and pepper, and not much of the latter. I'm not getting nearly as much dill as I expected, not nearly as much eggplant as I want and as Carly receives (who doesn't even like it!), and шашличный кетчуп (shashlichny ketchup) is my condiment of choice. Regular ketchup tastes weird.

Well, there it is. I'm getting enough to eat, the food agrees with me, and I'm figuring out Russian grocery stores, slowly but surely. Before I end this feast of a post, I would like to apologize for the copious amounts of parentheses. The reasons for this are the following: first, I had a request to transliterate the Russian words I use, and second, I really enjoy using parenthesis. If it bugs you, let me know and I'll try to reduce. If you have any other requests, write them on the bottom of a jar of peanut butter and send 'em my way.