About a month ago my students were giving presentations of their own research. They chose excellent topics: Russian holidays, and the foods that accompany them; French influences on Russian cuisine (and vice versa); traditions of tea drinking; feasting and fasting; the Leningrad blockade. Boris Kustodiev, "Merchant's Wife," 1918 The visuals were terrific as well. From the serious (images of the bread rations during the siege of Leningrad) to the informative (a diagram of the different parts of a samovar) to the gorgeous (Kustodiev's tea drinking merchant's wife -- everyone's favorite "edible" feast). I am not the first to comment on the merchant's wife's shoulders or to notice that they are as appetizing as the ripe red watermelon or the puffy white clouds in that blue blue sky. (Why, I wonder, is this his most famous painting? Is it the accoutrements à la Russe such as the brass samovar? or the obviously satisfied wife, who has ever...
A blog about travel and staying put, reading and writing, food and food for thought.