March 1

So I am sitting at Beehive, and I notice a very familiar bottle on the shelf. A bottle I haven't seen in at least 20 years, but one that was always in our home growing up. It's Riga Balsam, and it was only available when someone traveled to Latvia and brought a present. We usually put in in coffee, like you do with cognac and brandy. And the crafty people would turn the bottle into a vase to gift.

So I tell all that to the barkeep, and he makes a lovely experimental drink with it. It tastes like the woods and the sea. Turns out he doesn't know why the bottle is there, he's never seen it before. We all learned something new that night, and I will definitely be back for a funky Riga Balsam again.

Feb 23

It's Defender of the Fatherland Day in Russia! Rejoice!

On a more fun note, I went to my favourite-of-all-times restaurant for my birthday - Gaslight Brasserie du Coin in Boston.

Where we proceeded to take very silly pictures of eating dessert...

Feb 20-21

Even though I keep skipping a day here and there, this whole picture exercise

 has been fun.  This was my mood at the end of a rehearsal last night:

So to liven up the mood - today is my birthday, and thus far it involved:

Drinking prosecco with Mum on Skype

Going out to lunch with the best co-workers ever

And having tons and tons of Russian cake

I am totally stuffed right now, and it's only 6:30...

Feb 15

Hurray! Less than a block from work! Opened this week! Maybe even just yesterday, I clearly don't pay enough attention, even though I pass it daily!

Feb 2

Dinner at IKEA. Glorious.

Jan 4

In a continued effort to live healthy, the salad I had for lunch.

Sweet Escape

 

Current Russia is filled with little cafes like this one.  No, it's not exceptionally cozy, but fairly cheap and convenient.

 

My mom and I had a latte and a milkshake, in addition to some extravagant sweets:

 

But the most interesting part was the flyer lying on every table, advertising "New Sweets for the Spring 2010" produced by the largest confectionary company in Tomsk - Antonov Dvor, which conveniently listed its website on the back - if you can read a bit of Russian, you can find even more cakes on their website.

I've decided to share some of these with you - if anyone is interested in the cake descriptions, I can translate those, but just the names are worth it:

Don Quixote

Dark-skinned Girl

Bolero

Sweet Almond

Pani Eva

Raspberry Bells Ringing

For Two

Almond in Chocolate

Liza

Summer

Puzzle

Graffiti

Waltz

Chocolate and cream-cheese

In honor of Easter - food...

Toni Bourdain in his “Les Halles Cookbook” expresses the following:

"Good cooks do not exist in a vacuum…Think of food like drugs. If you were a druggie, and you moved to a new and unfamiliar town, chances are you wouldn’t know where to score your drug of choice. First thing you’d do is to seek out other drug users. You’d pick out an obvious spot, like the parking lot of a methadone clinic, a bad part of town, a pawnshop, a Phish concert, and you’d make “friends” with fellow travelers of similar interests. Soon, no doubt after a few bad experiences, some trial and error, you would find what you need. Same thing with food. Kind of.”

Foodies of my mind, unite...

I've been trying to go to the local Russian store more often, as they carry the most interesting foods sometimes. Behold, a full meal that would not be out of place in Tomsk:




We have: toasted matnakash (which I always call "lavash" because that's what we called it in Siberia when we were little, even though true lavash is totally different, and is more like a tortilla.)

With that we have some cold cuts of ham and salami (the Russian store has nearly 20 varieties of sausages and as many types of ham), topped with some awesome Armenian brynza (it's sort of a feta cheeze, but not to be confused with Slovak bryndza from the Wiki article) - just the right degree of salty.



On the side there is a Russian version of sauerkraut (which was too fresh, and inspired me to make some of my own - proper pickled cabbage needs to be more limp and, well, pickly) and my favourite salad of all times - Olivier



Ahh, and that green drink the colour of a chemistry experiment? That would be my favourite soda, Tarhun. The green is, of course, food colouring, but the drink IS actually flavoured with tarragon.

I have to admit that the meal as a whole would be incomplete by strict Russian standards, as it consists only of zakuski without the requisite first course (soup), hot course (meat or fish) or dessert (well, we had dessert, I just didn't take any pictures of it.)

In fact, the meal as it was laid out would have been perfect accompaniment to a bottle of vodka, as tradition dictates. Too bad I don't drink vodka (I know, what a bad Russian) and can't justify a full holiday meal on a Thursday:)

Bastille Day!

Today is Bastille Day. Vive La France! To celebrate this event, I went to see Pixar’s Ratatouille. More about that later. In other news, and this is for MK:

Ani DiFranco never fails to brings the ladies and a few sensitive dudes to tears or soft, gentle whimpering with her honest lyrics, music, and tight body. Anais Mitchell opens. Her folk-rock tunes of love gone gosh darn crummy start at 8 p.m. at the Warfield, 982 Market (at Fifth St.); Tickets are $40.50.

I stopped listening to Ani circa 2000. The most I ever paid for her concerts was $22. My college roommate used to go see her in clubs in NYC for free. I realize $40 is not nearly the same type of inflation you now get with really famous bands (you don’t want to know how much we are paying to see The Police in Fenway Park), and that musicians need to eat too, but this is sad.

Oh yeah, Ani - there was only so much tragic whining I could handle. Plus, she stopped being intriguing when she got married. That ended in divorce, yeah? I am happy she is still making music, and there are still people coming to ogle her tight body. Maybe if I listen to her again now (her new stuff, I mean) I might like her again. I should experiment.

But back to rats in the kitchen. In his excellent book The soul of a chef: The Journey Toward Perfection Michael Ruhlman says the following:

“When we braise meat, we can if we choose, connect ourself with everyone who has ever braised meat and everyone who will ever braise meat…to connect to that same pleasure, that amazement, to connect to that same gratitude. This is the kind of satisfaction that people who truly love to cook are after. We seek, in our collective struggle, to learn more and to cook better, but we are in fact reaching for that connection to humanity that we’ve lost or maybe never had or simply want more of. This connection will forever elude us…if we ever lose sight of cooking’s fundamental importance to others.…never forgot for a moment what the work was all about: to cook for people and to make them happy.”

That’s what food is all about. And that’s what Rémy, the cutest rat in history of film, wants to do for people, and does with great success. He has pink ears, nose, and paws, and is great at using these to express emotion as only a rat might. I predict a huge surge in pet rats this year, as there were thousands of clown fish being acquired after “Finding Nemo”, and dalmations a decade earlier. The depiction of the food and the restaurant business in Ratatouille is flawless, and I dare say Rémy’s fur is more realistic than that of James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (or as I like to call him, “Kitty” in “Monsters, INC”.) Aforementioned Thomas Keller, chef/owner of French Laundry, served as an adviser on the film, providing his recipes for the dishes, as well as the model for the way the kitchen should be run. In return, to quote SFGate’s Stacy Finz “To pay homage to the cooking profession, the filmmakers used Keller's voice for the role of a restaurant patron. The French version of the movie has chef Guy Savoy playing the part; the Spanish one substitutes the voice of El Bulli chef Ferran Adria. In the British version, "The Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver has a cameo as the restaurant inspector.” My hero Tony Bourdain called this film “quite simply the best food movie ever made”, and anyone who has any modicum of interest in food (not even cooking, just eating well) should see it. I am done gushing now.