Manic Bookstore Cafe

This has been an exciting week for me on the publishing front. Academic Studies Press sent out marketing postcards for our book, which is coming out in about a month. The cover of the new book. Note the cool design elements! I have read and loved this book for thirty years, and I've been working with one or another version of the essays with students for almost five. Now the full translation of  Russian Cuisine in Exile will finally offer English-speaking audiences a chance to explore these forty-four essays (with recipes) for themselves. Original Cover In 1987 Pyotr Vail and Alexander Genis collected their columns into a little book.  Russian Cuisine in Exile  for me evokes Russian Literature in Exile ( Русская литература в изгнании ), a book by Prof. Gleb Struve originally published in 1956 (and never translated into English, to my knowledge). Struve, who by that time was faculty at Berkeley, was a part of the first-wave of emigration after the Russian Re...

It's late May, which in the U.S. means that we are in the midst of Memorial Day Weekend. Like many holidays, and many American holidays, there is a political and nationalistic cast to this holiday: on Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, we are supposed to think of our dead, especially our war dead. When I was a child we had a Memorial Day Parade, and we always ended up at the cemetery. Union Memorial, Evergreen Cemetery, Barrington, IL Often it was hot, really hot, and we would stand around the Union Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery. There were actual veterans in the parade, of course, and an honor salute. My most vivid memory was when a fellow member of the trombone section fainted on me from heat and dehydration in about the eighth grade or so. I knew how important the holiday was, really I did. It's just that it can be awfully hot at the end of May. That sense of patriotism is missing in a lot of holiday celebrations these days. For most Americans, Memorial Day wee...

Trump's in the White House, the  Russians are encroaching on Ukraine, the EU is hemorrhaging members, and there are Americans in the House of Windsor. Someone has to maintain standards. I was just on my own recipe blog, the 2014 Recipe Project , in order to make a cheesecake. (My daughter is home from college and my husband just submitted his final grades -- end of academic year rituals ensue.) But on that recipe blog an important item is missing. Scones. I can't remember the first scone I ever ate, but I can call up some delicious moments, many of which took place in England. At Henley-on-Thames after a long spring trek. At St. Martin-in-the-Fields in the Crypt Cafe in London. Outdoors near the Borough Market with Tina our former Thai exchange student. Having tea and scones -- or even a cream tea, with that thick clotted cream -- is a ritual for my family. Talking with Tina (who lived with us in 2011-12 and is now practically a medical doctor) via facetime the other d...

It's that time of year. The semester is almost over, and everyone is desperate for spring (today is 75 degrees and windy, more snow expected on Monday). Our forsythia has given up trying to bloom. Жаворонки But as I was preparing for a talk I gave this week in Missoula, Montana, I was reminded of my lark buns. These traditional Russian buns can be made with milk and butter or according to the "lenten" recipe, with oil and water. Depending, of course, on whether spring is due before or after Orthodox Easter or, if you're just a regular American, on whether you are vegan. It seemed appropriate to end my Missoula talk on Russian cookbooks and cuisine with this slide -- especially as I had been invited to campus by my PhD student (who coincidentally is actually  vegan). It was such fun to stay with her family, to dine with my old grad school chums who happen to work at the University of Montana with her, and to meet many of her students and colleagues. My for...