Hello Ladies! There may be times in your life when you are craving something chocolaty and who knows why you may want it to be shaped like sausage. You are at the right place, kick back, relax and learn how in less than twenty minutes you can make your very own delicious rock-hard Russian Chocolate Sausage.

For this recipe you will need just a few simple products:

4 packs of Maria’s Cookies from the Mexican Aisle in your grocery store;
1 cup of sugar;
4 tablespoons of milk;
Vanilla extract;
Cocoa;
2 sticks of butter;
1 egg;
Nuts are optional but they sure taste good;

Now that all of your ingredients are assembled you are ready to start. Mix sugar and egg, add milk, vanilla extract and cocoa. How much cocoa depends on how chocolaty you prefer your chocolate sausage; put too little and it will be unappealingly pale, put too much and you will have hard time finding it in the dark when you crave it the most. Now place the mixture on low heat and continue to mix with rhythmical circular motions until the sugar completely dissolves and it slowly starts to boil. Do not beat it with the whisk, you are not trying to whip it into cream, just mix slowly so it doesn’t burn. When the mixture starts bubbling a little, add softened butter. Do not stop mixing but remove it from the heat. It’s warm enough. When the butter melts you can finally stop.

Now proceed to break the cookies into small pieces. You should end up with a mix of small pieces and crumbs. Some of you will be tempted to use a food processor but restrain yourself, chocolate sausage likes manual touch.

Combine the chocolate mixture with broken-up cookies. If you decided to experiment with nuts, now would be the time to add them.

Make sure that you are doing a thorough job, I recommend using a spatula with brisk up- and down- motions. You don’t want to leave any cookies dry, it will adversely affect the chocolate sausage.

Place a large piece of parchment paper on the table and spoon the mixture in the even layer close to the edge.

Starting at the near edge tightly wrap your chocolate sausage. When it’s wrapped squeeze and roll it as needed to even out the mixture distribution.

You are doing very good, almost done. You may want to wrap the sausage in another layer of aluminum foil just in case. Now place it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

That’s one long thick sausage you have. Doesn’t even fit on the shelf. I know you want to eat it right away but you need to wait. Leave it there for now.

When the sausage is hard remove it from the fridge, unwrap and slice up to your liking. Let it melt in your mouth, smell the chocolate, feel the crunch. Enjoy the Russian Chocolate Sausage!

*God, I apologize for writing this post.

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Just a few photos here and there…

Prehistoric squirrel discovered along my walking trail:

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These photos show how stores used to advertise goods and services but the most interesting thing is prices.
As always all photos are linked to their large versions.

Nowadays even XO has to pay more than 75 cents for his haircut.

Carton of cigarettes for $2.25.

Notice – old-timey cereal boxes on the top shelf.

Sa-Tan-Ic Laxative Compound in the bottom right.

Next week, your grandma in a bathtub! Stay tuned.

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Recent post by Scott Adams described his vision for the future of public transportation in the new economy.

Suppose the government enacted laws that made it legal for anyone to be a taxi driver in his own car without a special taxi license. And suppose the income was non-taxable. The result would be cheap taxis and high availability. Every time you wanted to run an errand, and had an extra minute, you could choose to pick up a rider and cut your own driving expense in half. Technology will make it easy to match amateur taxi drivers with riders. And the market would keep prices low.

This is very similar to the system that existed for years (and still alive an well) in the USSR and countries that followed it. In addition to pretty well developed system of public transportation and state-owned taxis, a person could just stand on the street, raise a hand and flag down a private car. Both sides benefited equally: a passenger received a semic0mfortable ride for a price comparable to a cab (general price/distance ratio was common knowledge) and a driver made some extra money without making any extra effort. Some people liked it so much that they made it into a part-time job. Others just picked up passengers on the way home or wherever.

Imagine yourself standing somewhere on the Lenin Street (each city had one of these), you raise your hand and soon one of these beauties stops to pick you up:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Soviet Union had its own “Big 3”: GAZ, AutoVAZ, and AZLK; ZAZ in Ukraine produced some of the ugliest and the most unreliable even by the Soviet standards vehicles. Due to the shortage of cars and years-long waiting lists people were happy to get anything with wheels. Sometimes, when at the end of the month autoworkers were rushing to fulfil quotas so they can get their bonus, a lucky buyer would find a bucket of uninstalled parts inside his new vehicle. Despite these cars being 20-30 behind the rest of the automotive world when they came off assembly line, many of them are still on the road closing in on 40 years. Soviet people invented ingenious ways of keeping them going and they turned out relatively easy to fix and maintain.

My current situation does not easily lend itself to carpooling: I don’t always go straight to work and don’t always drive straight home. The other problem is potential emergency situations that happen rarely but still have to be planned for. In this city I don’t have a reasonable way of getting home from work without my personal vehicle, so I would welcome an opportunity to get a ride from someone who is already headed in the same direction. The only issue  is that when I was growing up© people getting into a stranger’s car were not afraid to be later found in the woods in a block of concrete; drivers were not generally scared of being robbed, killed or raped. Once I hitchhiked almost 200 miles  from where I was stationed in the army to my hometown, changing 5 or 6 cars in the process and never felt any danger; I was wearing my uniform and no one ever asked me for any money. (if some window pops up, just click “return to map”) I don’t know if I would have the same trust now, but if sharing a ride was commonly accepted practice I would probably give it a try.

If you are ever so lucky to get a ride in an old Soviet Car make sure to try this, it will make you instantly popular:

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I could totally turn this blog into a display of old pictures and still be happy with it. Browsing through the old photos always makes me wonder why people’s faces changed so much since the 40’s and 50’s. When was the last time you saw a person who looked like this:

“Roy Allison Roberts (more photos) was a managing editor, president, editor and general manager of The Kansas City Star who guided the paper during its influential period during the Presidencies of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower”. Looking at Mr.Roberts’s photo I get a sense of a determined decisive person who knows what he is doing. Granted, this impression may be completely wrong, he may have been a total incompetent, but that’s what I think when I look at the picture.

Now let’s take a look at the face of the current publisher of Star Mark Zieman. For all I know, Mr.Zieman may be a future Nobel Prize Laureate but his face doesn’t exactly exude business confidence, assurance, decisiveness and drive. Maybe he is a nice guy and a great person but who do you want to represent your business at a tough time – a man who looks like a nice guy, or a man with a face of a bulldog who looks like his is ready to kick your ass and shove that cigar you-know-where if things are not done, deadlines are not met and orders are not followed.

Even getting fired is more acceptable from a Mr.Roberts-looking guy, than from a an insincerely apologetic person who looks like Mr.Zieman. No amount of cigar smoke can compensate.

Does the path from bosses like Mr.Roberts – tough, larger-than-life personalities, to people like Mr.Zieman – nicer, more intellectual types, reflect the transformation of businesses like Kansas City Star from an influential force in the city to a thin folded stack of paper with color photos and crappy articles? I don’t know the answer but I thought it was a neat theory.

This concludes my amateur face-character analysis session. Make sure to look at the other photos of Roy A.Roberts where is featured on the cover of the Time magazine or pictured talking to President Truman.

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