During my trip to St.Louis I made my annual visit to McDonald’s because my daughter requested McSalad. I was disappointed that inflation continues to devastate McValue “dollar” menu. You used to be able to get medium French fries in a cardboard package, and now it’s downgraded to small fries in a little paper bag. Very old people would be able to recite McDonald’s original prices: hamburgers–15 cents; cheeseburgers–19 cents; fries–10 cents; soft drinks–10 cents and 15 cents; coffee–5 cents; and shakes–20 cents. With higher prices and crappy food there shouldn’t be any reason to go to McDonald’s, while we have plenty of local hamburger joints such as Town Topic, Harold’s and Winstead’s.
Long time ago (and I mean long,long time) I was traveling in what was then a beautiful and welcoming Republic of Georgia, still a part of soon to be defunct Soviet Union. Georgia is known for its beauty, Caucasus mountains and warm beaches on the Black Sea, ancient cultural relics, great food and some of the best wine in the world, and as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was born in the City of Gori which was a huge source of pride for the Georgian people. When Stalin was alive, his portraits, monuments and various other likenesses were literally everywhere. After Stalin’s Cult of Personality was condemned in 1956 most of this junk was removed and one of the few places that kept all of it’s pre-1956 glory was the City of Gori. From the huge portrait of Stalin at the entrance to the railway station to his monument and museum at his birthplace, complete with Stalin’s personal rail car, the city looked like the old days when it was the Birthplace of the “beloved” leader.
By the time I was born all of the history books and movies were edited not to dwell on Stalin’s persona and the horrors during his regime. In the movies he was shown as a wise man of a few words, issuing battle-winning military directives, and in the books there may have been a mention or two about the cult of personality. It wasn’t a secret but it wasn’t talked about either. As it turned out later,everything was much worse than it was presented in 1956. So when I found myself staring in amazement at something I have never seen in my lifetime, I didn’t really think twice about standing at the birthplace of evil, on the contrary, it was neat to take a step back in time.
A lot has changed since I stood next to the Stalin’s rail car in Gori. There is no Soviet Union, Georgia is not so welcoming anymore, and I don’t have curls. I found this old photo in my album and thought about my careless youth and fun memories I still have from that time.
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.
There are two kinds of people in the world – selfless dreamers and the rest of us. Selfless dreamers are busy dreaming up ways to make the world better, feed the starving, enrich the poor and keep the Earth at some temperature that they know to be perfect for all of us to live happily and comfortably. The rest of us are lazily pointing out why these dreams will never come true and why they shouldn’t, at the same time hoping that there is enough medication to keep selfless dreamers sedated or at least writing another unsellable book. Sometimes the dreamers manage to convince the weakest-minded among the rest of us to follow them and that’s when we end up participating in wild social experiments like the one in the USSR that lasted for over 70 years.
I am sure in 1917 the idea of communal living sounded great: rich people where enjoying palaces and nice apartments with heat and indoor plumbing, while the poor where huddling in shanties, dorms and dirty cramped tenements with no running water and freezing outhouses. People reasoned that they could use an upgrade, kick out or downsize the rich oppressors, move into their posh apartments and share the amenities with their working class brethren. Thus was born a “kommunalka” or a communal apartment where many families were crammed together in a formerly single-family apartment. I am not sure how many days it took the new kommunalka dwellers to realize their mistake, find the dreamers who promised to make their lives better and beat them senseless, but they and their families had over 70 years to regret that move and some are still facing their neighbors every morning in the line to use the restroom.
I guess it takes a generation to grow up without knowing any better to have a completely opposite reaction to something that would normally be considered abnormal. I’ve seen all kinds of living arrangements but I never thought that any of them were weird, no matter how ugly, overpopulated or cramped some of these places looked I always thought that was business as usual. I wrote about communal living before and originally planned to expand on the subject but I found a virtual museum with plans, photos and videos, with English captions and transcripts which thoroughly covers every aspect of life in a kommunalka. You wouldn’t find any of this in the glossy cheery photo albums that somehow made it into this country.
However, for your enjoyment I uploaded and tagged a video clip from the movie Russian Dolls in which the characters arrive at the typical apartment in St.Petersburg.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HcNmpEiNdU
Another clip is from a recent Russian movie Stilyagi which also depicts a huge communal apartment, although it may be a dorm. I think in real life the happiness was dialed down a little (or a lot). Also notice neighbors always being in your business and a lot of times in your food (imagine your office fridge times 10).
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyGOf0jdOoQ
Thin walls, whole families in the same room with kids and grandparents, often separated only by curtains, fights, hate, backstabbing, stealing, it wasn’t a communal dream that the dreamers promised. But at the same time there was love, care, lifelong friendships, memorable times and helping hands – some things cannot be killed by years of inhuman living conditions.
During my trip to St.Louis I made my annual visit to McDonald’s because my daughter requested McSalad. I was disappointed that inflation continues to devastate McValue “dollar” menu. You used to be able to get medium French fries in a cardboard package, and now it’s downgraded to small fries in a little paper bag.
Long time ago (and I mean long,long time) I was traveling in what was then a beautiful and welcoming Republic of Georgia, still a part of soon to be defunct Soviet Union. Georgia is known for its beauty, Caucasus mountains and warm beaches on the Black Sea, ancient cultural relics, great food and some of the best wine in the world, and as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was born in the City of Gori which was a huge source of pride for the Georgian people. When Stalin was alive, his portraits, monuments and various other likenesses were literally everywhere. After Stalin’s Cult of Personality was condemned in 1956 most of this junk was removed and one of the few places that kept all of it’s pre-1956 glory was the City of Gori. From the huge portrait of Stalin at the entrance to the railway station to his monument and museum at his birthplace, complete with Stalin’s personal rail car, the city looked like the old days when it was the Birthplace of the “beloved” leader.
