Food

I have seen zero grossly obese people in Russia.
Zero.
Not one.
Not any of the people who were shuffling around like penguins in the Metro in Moscow, and that’s in a city of 10 million (and Ken and I feel like we saw a million of them in one day!). I saw a few, but only a few, people who could stand to lose a few pounds. I saw quite a few more people who could definitely stand to gain a few pounds. And I’ve seen a JILLION people who are just right.

Why do they look so good, and we Americans don’t? They walk a lot. Our Metro station is a brisk 10-minute walk from here, a leisurely 15-minute one. In the States, my car is conveniently located in my garage approximately 10 feet from my fridge, oh, I mean, my back door.
I’m also pretty sure they don’t watch hours and hours of TV, munching on Cheetos and slugging down sugary sodas all the while.

I suppose people exercise, but I’ve seen nobody jogging specifically for exercise or anything like that. Of course, there are gyms, and people play basketball and other sports. I know they drink a LOT more vodka, but I hardly think that’s the key to looking great! I think the answer lies mostly in their food, and what follows are my comments on Russian cuisine. They eat more fresh foods and darker breads. We’ve had a number of excellent salads that have fresh onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers (not so much lettuce, and definitely not the nutritionless iceberg). Russian black bread is great; the other breads we’ve had are average at best, in my opinion. (France and Italy would beat the pants off both Russia and the States in a bread war.) But I’ve had nothing resembling what Krista disdainfully refers to as “Fat-free Wonder Crustless White Bread.”

They have stuff that can get a person fat, certainly. They simply eat more moderate amounts of it. There’s a lot of different kinds of pasta; for example, we’ve had Pell-MEENY, which resembles ravioli, stuffed with meat, or potatoes and mushrooms (Ken’s and my favorite), or cottage cheese (also great, but less common). They serve it with a better-than-ours- but-it’s-the -closest-comparison sour cream, or (disgusting!) plain ketchup or mayonnaise.

They have these awesome little ice cream-ish things (but they won’t sound awesome in my description) that are actually a fine sort of cottage cheese coated in chocolate that you eat like an ice cream bar. By the way, their cottage cheese is more like a combination of ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, and maybe even cream cheese -- and it’s delicious! It’s in a lot of dishes, surprising ones even, and I love it.

There are a couple of outstanding Russian chocolate makers, and Ken has been sacrificing his body to research the best dark chocolate bars to take back to the States as gifts; he is close to making a decision, but perhaps a few more samples would be in order before he nails his choice down to THE one.

And then there’s my favorite, something I’ve referred to in a previous blog: blih-KNEE. Think crepes in France and you’ll come close. These ultra-thin pancakes are filled with everything from meat and mashed potatoes to caviar to sweetened condensed milk and cottage cheese. My favorite, just as it was in France, is the banana and chocolate (not a traditional favorite, but still available at most of the places that serve these pancakes), but I like it much better here, because I like “real” chocolate more than I like Nutella, which is hazelnut. We’ll attempt to make this back in Abilene, so if you’d like to try it, let us know and we’ll serve one up!

And the soups we’ve had so far have been great. I understand that often soup is served cold here, and I admit that that sounds less appealing; however, we’ve had maybe four different soups, and they’ve all been served hot. All were good, with lots of fresh vegetables in them, in larger pieces than Campbell’s usually provides! I’ve also loved a risotto, rice dish, that we had that is a kind of rice pilaf; the cook gave me some of the spices that she used, so I’ll try this recipe back home, too.

Ken and the students break for tea daily here (around 11:00 A.M., and then they eat lunch together at 2 P.M.), and I’ve grown fond of the tradition. Ken has always drunk hot tea with honey in the mornings, but I usually have my Diet Coke for my early dose of caffeine. But here they use these quick-heat water heater pitchers, so making tea is a fast, delicious, and companionable experience. I plan to retain hot tea drinking in the States.

There have been a few yucky things, too, of course. They’ve served some thin-sliced undercooked meat of some sort that was popular with the students; there are lots of different-yet-all-the-same cakes with jam inside them that are kind of dry; there are some salted fish that look at you as you are about to eat them, a not-so-appealing experience. Well, this will provide you a taste (ha,ha!) of what we’re eating while we’re here.