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My grandmother Toma hates cooking. She lives alone and survives mostly on bread and cheese. Sometimes she makes a big pot of soup that lasts her a week or kasha that can be stretched for a few days. As a…
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Being a nerd that I am, I’ve decided if I am going to write about blini at all, I must cover the topic from every possible angle. Which is why I started with a classic blini recipe, then ventured into…
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There seems to be a terrible confusion about Russian buckwheat blini which no-one talks about. Namely: the small round pancakes passed as blini in the West are not what I, as a Russian, call blini. A quick Google search revealed…
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“What if I never become successful?” I asked my husband at half past eleven pm, after staring into the screen of my computer for a few hours in an attempt to finalize a recipe for rhubarb ginger jam. He stared…
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Rhubarb and ginger jam born in lockdown must be the best of rhubarb and ginger jams, or maybe even jams — period. One has the time and the patience to test and test some more without hurry and frustrations. But…
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I keep a running list of all the dishes I cook with seasonal produce, so that by the end of each month I can write this post. But whether because the choice of fruits and vegetables in March is wildly…
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I am not a working mom. I am a hobbying mom. MS Word keeps marking it red, so I guess, “hobbying” is not a word. I am a mom with a hobby, all right. What constitutes work, anyways? According to the…
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When it comes to the famous Russian cabbage soup, the first thing you need to learn is how to pronounce it. Shchi. What nonsense, right? The “shch” combination looks terrifying even to me, and I am Russian. In Kachka: a…
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Sirniki make for a fancy breakfast. On a normal day, morning starts with eggs, open-faced sandwiches, or tvorog — Russian-style cottage cheese — mixed with a tablespoon of sour cream and jam. In other words, something that takes a few…
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In my mind this cake goes by blinniy tort, not crepe cake. Crepe cake sounds so French, so chic. Blinniy tort, on the other hand, sounds rather simple and rustic, at least to someone who speaks Russian. Blinniy means “made…
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