The truth is, I am lazy, my car is in the shop and I have nothing better to do working tirelessly to entertain you. Some of those might have been used in the previous posts, sorry.
With paramedics, polyclinics and plastic bone banks everybody gets free care in the USSR.
In the 1919 when the newly launched Soviet Union was threatened by a plague of louse-borne typhus, Vladimir Illyich Lenin bluntly warned his countrymen: “Either the lice defeat socialism or socialism defeats the lice.” The USSR survived the lice and in the half century since has built to most massive system of the national health care ever known, still based on Lenin’s logical, if unsentimental premise: Russia needs her workers, and a sick worker cannot work.
From birth do death the Soviet citizen is followed by a dossier of his health history. He may get production line preventive treatment without leaving his post at school, factory, farm or office. If he is sick but can walk, he goes to a polyclinic, one of thousands of free, all-purpose infirmaries. At least in the cities there are doctors aplenty. Of the world’s 2.5 million physicians, 500,000 – or one in five – are Russians. (The U.S. by comparison has 309,000 M.D.s, for a population 85% as large. Another half million trained medical assistants called feldshers supplement the doctors, particularly in the vast, thinly settled rural outlands.
The system has flaws. To achieve quantity, the quality of treatment often suffers. Hospital sanitation is spotty at best. Anesthetics and modern equipment are often unavailable and most advanced drugs have to be imported. Dentistry is painfully old-fashioned. Medical education considered as a whole, is not up to U.S. standards (I would argue with that. M.V). But the Soviet goal is a lifetime health care for everyone, and any enterprise that ambitious is bound to have failings.
…well, I usually eat 3 or 4. I don’t eat them for health benefits or because they are cheap or for whatever other reason – I just like the apples. I like them fresh, cooked, in a pie, in a cake, baked, in apple sauce, with caramel or honey, sliced, peeled, unpeeled and I like most of the varieties. Every year we try to make a trip to a local apple orchard to pick some fresh fruit. I was a locavore before it became trendy and people started doing it to feel good about themselves.
We are surrounded by many apple orchards. There is Vaughn’s in Weston, we were going there for years, Schreiman’s in Waverly, it’s not u-pick but is very nice and in a beautiful historic area; and for the last couple of years we are picking apples at Pome on the Range orchard in Williamsburg, KS. Besides apples and pumpkins they also sell fruit wines some Kansas-grown produce, jams, honey and other things that are good for you.
Today they had their annual fall festival but it looks like they still have plenty of apples to pick for the next weekend or three. If you are in Kansas, especially South Johnson County, you are just 25-30 miles away. Not only you will keep the doctor away, you will be able to brag about eating local and catch envious looks of your not-so-hip friends. While you are at it, mention that you only drink Shatto milk to completely crush them with you locavorness.
For the next year I am keeping an eye on the Wagon Wheel Orchard which was picked out early this year due to being very young. They seem to have a great variety – something I am always looking for.
I knew there was a post somewhere on this blog about the Russian pancakes made with Farmer Cheese for which I coined a term cheese-niki, but when my sophisticated gastronomical friend Katrina posted a recipe on her blog, I thought it was time to revisit the subject.
There must be some unfortunate reason why the American people are being deprived of multiple milk products. Kefir is only now becoming widely available or even known to many people, there is probably one lonely brand of Farmer Cheese, and such delicacies as baked milk and ryazhenka are mostly unheard of outside of the Russian store. In light of the aforementioned shortages of common ingredients I had to adapt my recipe to whatever is available on hand. Yes, there are ways of making Farmer Cheese at home, but as my daughter would gladly tell you – I am lazy, and all my cooking is based on the least possible amount of work and clean-up.
For this recipe you’ll need a 32 oz tub of the all-natural plain or vanilla yogurt, 1 egg, about a cup of flour, a small amount of salt and baking soda, sugar, and optional vanilla and raisins, craisins or whatever else you might like. You will also need cheesecloth, which is widely available at most grocery stores, craft department at Walmart, kitchen stores and elsewhere.
When buying yogurt look for one with the least possible amount of ingredients; the one I used had just one ingredient -milk. I usually pick a large container at Walmart where it only costs around two dollars. Other yogurts contain fillers, white paint, super-glue and other fine ingredients, but while it may be OK to eat, I have no idea what will happen when you try to cook with it.
The night before you want to cook pancakes (or few nights, if you are a long-term planner), strain the yogurt. The way I do it is to cut a piece of cheesecloth large enough to cover a colander when folded in two. Then I cover the colander with two layers of cheesecloth, empty the yogurt container into it, tie the ends to create sort of a pouch and hang it overnight to drain.
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