a fresh start.

A Russian spread in May

I haven't stopped cooking. I have, however, decided not to get a CSA this year. This turned out to be a good decision, since I wouldn't have been around in the fall for it anyways: in August, I'm moving to Illinois. (I've been promised a good farmer's market in my new home, Urbana, though! Plus the Midwest is farm central, right??) So, I decided to revamp this blog and write more broadly about my adventures in the kitchen. But, this decision also coincided with my departure for Russia for two months, so I've also decided to feature my eating adventures over here as well. I've become one of those people that takes pictures of their food at restaurants, and posts these images to Instagram and Facebook somewhat obsessively. Sorry. But not really. Sure someone wants to know what Chinese food in Russia looks like, or has never tried buckwheat kasha because it sounds kind of scary. Well, for the next several weeks, I'll try to explain what food is like in Russia today. Or at least my version and approach.

My Russian kitchen

So what's been going on so far? I have my own apartment here in Vladimir, with an old kitchen. The stove is gas and I have to light it with matches. The oven is the same way, and it took me years to work up the courage to use a Russian gas oven. Now I've gotten it down (and I only burned a few chocolate chip cookies this year while I was adjusting the heat on the first batch), and maybe one day I'll bake some Russian treats. This means that I get to cook for myself, instead of having someone else prepare all my meals for me, like the students staying with host families. Sometimes I'm lazy, or busy, or it's too hot. And usually I'm running late and just have a bottle of (delicious) drinkable yogurt for breakfast. This year, I've pretty much only been making two things for dinner: buckwheat with mushrooms, or pelmeni (dumplings) with meat. Soon I'll be mixing it up with some leftover bliny I get from our cooking classes, and maybe even some chicken or a soup of some kind...

The cafeteria line

As part of my job as the resident director for a study abroad program, I get lunch 5 days a week at the cafeteria. I'm only a little ashamed to admit that I have a soft spot for institutional food. I have fond memories of chicken fried steak at elementary school, but Russian cafeteria food is even better. It's always prepared fresh, from real ingredients. Someone washed, peeled, and cut the potatoes in the same kitchen they serve us from. They probably even grind a lot of the meat themselves. Not to mention the pastries!!

Then, there are the times I eat out. There is a Chinese restaurant I really like, even if the students thought it wasn't good.  Bar food is also quite different here: instead of burgers and fries or chicken wings, there's shashlik (grilled meat cooked on a skewer), served with lavash (thin bread, like a tortilla almost), onion and  sauce. To go with beer and vodka, there's all sorts of snacks, since Russians chase with food rather than juice, usually. My favorite are sukhariki, which are like croutons, but made from rye bread and flavored with garlic or cheese. Even better are grenki, which is thick strips of bread, cooked in oil or butter with garlic (a lot like the fried bread in Lithuania).

So, stay tuned for some Russian food, and Caucasian cuisine, the local take on pizza, and maybe even the new McDonald's. Then, when I get back home, there'll be more stories of home cooking with local ingredients, though the locale will change.