Kazan — summer 2012

I wanted to head back to the market today for a couple of reasons. First, there are some packed lunch stands there that are always full of people, but alas, when I arrived, I was still full of veal from last night and breakfast from this morning, so no lunch.

The market is amazing. Let me give you just a few shots. First off, the juice venders make an amazingly colorful presentation. Mostly they sell fruit juices for a euro a cup. I got myself and honeydew melon and mint juice. Very tasty.

Many of the stalls sell fruit salads, really just chunks of fruit cut up and neatly packaged. Again, beautiful presentation.

Spain is known for its pork products, and their are butchers everywhere.

But my main goal was to find a couple gifts. There are two women who I gave perfume to last year. Don't want to do that again. The gifts went off well, but giving perfume is always a risky business. Plus you don't want to be boring in your gift giving. So I had settled on some of Barcelona's chocolates. Barcelona is an incredible chocolate city; I can't imagine it's outdone anywhere except perhaps for Austria or Switzerland. Anyway, there is a confectioner at the market that caught my eye. I wanted to get one of their ½ kilo truffles, basically rectangles of layered chocolate, but then I worried that I wouldn't successfully transport them. Too much heat or getting crushed in my backpack amid boxes of iPads and computers... Tricky. So I asked the saleswoman which ones would travel well. She pointed out three types of turrones. A turrón is a nougat, which in this context means an almond paste. I chose turrones that additionally had some hazel nuts and hazel praline intertwined with them.

I'm hoping that makes them happy. After all, it's not every day an American brings a Russian a Spanish confection, right?

And last but not least, I want to show you the t-shirt I bought. I actually bought it in the old city on the way back from the chocolate museum, but I'm too lazy to make an independent entry. It's a mosaic lizard, not really like the one at the entry to Park Güell, but I liked it nonetheless.

Just did my first real grocery shopping. First for breakfast I picked up

a package of katyk, which is a fermented milk product made from condensed milk. It's a Tatar drink. Fell in love with it last year.

Then I bought

your basic salami style sausage, although this is a bit moister and less dense.

Then I added

Adygeizskiy cheese, which is a lot like fresh mozzarella except lighter.

Then for dinner I picked up

frozen pelmeni, which are a like a thick ravioli, only much better, which must be served with

sour cream. That's right, you buy the sour cream in flexible plastic packets.

Only later did I discover the gas isn't working on my stove. Maybe the pelmeni won't work after all. You have to boil them to eat them.

Had a great night's sleep upstairs. The window was open, but not a single mosquito. Amazing.

I essentially got a full eight hours rest, so I went downstairs to the kitchen with my Nook to do a bit of reading. (I'm incapable of reading in bed.) Flyura was already at work in the kitchen. “Don, why are you up so early?” We chatted a bit, but of course she felt she had to prepare me tea and something to eat. In the meantime she was making homemade noodles for the soup later in the day, a process I had never observed before, and she was also making bliny, the Russian equivalent of crepes.

Once Danila awoke, Flyura sent him to the garden to gather strawberries. When she came back she sliced off a couple pieces of ice cream for each of us (she sliced the blue cylinder of ice cream with a knife!) and poured the berries on top. Ice cream for breakfast? Who's gonna say no to that?

Most of the time when I've had bliny, they have been about the size of a small corn tortilla for small tacos. Flura made hers as big as a standard dinner plate and then cut them into fourths. We ate them by rolling each quarter up by hand and then dipping them in varenye.

There are other ways to eat bliny, i.e. like a standard crepe wrapped around filling, but this was pretty great for breakfast.

Now I have to tell you about the garden here. Russians love their gardens. In the summertime, if a family has a dacha, they head out of town and plant as much as they possibly to prepare for winter. Danila's family actually has a private home just outside of Kazan, and they have enough land to do some serious gardening. And what do they grow? First off, they grow flowers. Russians love flowers! I keep saying ‘Russians,’ but most of what I'm saying here applies to the Tatars I know as well.

Danila's mom goes by Flyura, which I take to be the Russified form of fleur, which is French for ‘flower.’ Here are Flyura's flowers.

But really this is primarily a food garden. She grows strawberries, blueberries and currants, and then makes varenye out of them, a kind of syrupy jam (very tasty). Here is what a currant bush looks like.

What is a garden without sweet Russian cucumbers? Straight from the garden they are crunchy as an apple and have no bitter taste.

Here are the carrots.

And let's not forget the green house for starting delicate tomatos early.

She also grows a couple types of squash.

And now a few general shots.

And then I found the most curious plant that just grows wild around here. She says that the plant produces three-millimeter seeds that are very tasty.

She told me the leaves have a nice smell. I detected nothing. Perhaps if we dried them, rolled them as a cigarette and smoked them, then they would have a fairly distinct odor?

Once you have eaten Russian sour cream, you will never go back to American.