Manic Bookstore Cafe

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...

When I was younger, I lived in a commune. Only briefly, and only part time, but the experience was life-changing. And somehow destiny -- since I chose Russian as my profession, and since my politics have always leaned left, it was almost inevitable that I embrace collective living at some point. The commune we lived in was quite famous, located in the so-called Happy Valley of Western Massachusetts. Founded by a group of radicals escaping New York City some thirty years earlier, the commune occupied a 19th century farmhouse perched on a hill, with its requisite old barn looming across the dead end road. Inside the house each section was heated with its own wood stove and occupied by members of the commune: a single guy, a woman, two couples, a family, plus a dog, two cats, and at least one guinea pig. The kitchen featured a long trestle table and an enormous "Russian stove." No one cooked in it, but it did heat that portion of the house thoroughly during cold New England...

My course on cuisine is off to a good start. The students seem to be in shock from my expectations -- class in Russian, reading at home in Russian, lots of new vocabulary -- but I am encouraging them and taking my inspiration from Alexander Genis and his cabbage soup. Cabbage soup, Shchi , was our focus last week -- we read essays about it, talked about its history, looked it up in Russian culinary dictionaries, thought about how to slowly cook it in a traditional Russian stove, and of course practiced pronouncing it. We compared recipes: soup with mushrooms and sauerkraut; cabbage soup with pearl barley; "rich" cabbage soup. Cabbage soup with chicken, cabbage soup with beef, vegetarian or "fasting" cabbage soup. We contemplated whether it's worthwhile to eat cabbage soup without smetana , or sour cream. We also learned a proverb that will facilitate American students getting their tongues in the right position for those hushing sounds: Shchi da kasha, p...