Day 9-10

At the behest of Mom, I will herein describe my daily meals. Luckily, the continuity from day to day will make this easy to describe…

Breakfast:

· 1 Bowl, buckwheat kasha with red or blackcurrant jam. It’s a kind of porridge and needs to be microwaved for about a minute to make it edible. Sometimes I get a grits like substance, but the taste is so similar to the kasha that I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s the exact same thing.

· 2 Pieces, black bread. Toasted, these delicacies are possible the toughest foods to chew I’ve come across. Usually taking a swig of juice as a chaser will soften the bread enough to be swallowed. If they served this stuff during Beast Barracks, it would wreak havoc on the 5-7 chews rule. Just try to chew through a bite in fewer than 25 and I’ll be impressed.

· 2 pieces, unidentified cheese and 2 pieces, kolbasa. To make sandwiches with the black bread. Not too bad?

· Lots of unidentified fruit. I don’t think there’s a North American equivalent as far as I can tell, but these are essentially huge blue grapes with pits. They’re delicious though so I’m good.

· Juice. Probably the best part of my breakfast. I’m pretty sure it’s fresh squeezed, but it’s made from some kind of fruit and it’s quite good. Always a good bit of pulp at the bottom. I’m a fan.

Lunch: Varies; see Day 5-7. Often involves me just pointing at a menu item and praying.

Dinner:

· Same bread spread. Maybe some white bread for variety.

· Raw onion, 1. To be cut and put on the bread with some type of vegetable paste. Probably my favorite part of the dinner rotation. Apparently onions are natural antibiotics, so hopefully these will work their magic on me.

· More wonderful juice, sometimes some beer. Apparently my landlady’s son loves beer (shocking) and makes his own. It’s always a leap of faith drinking anything from an unlabeled bottle here in Russia, but I don’t think my landlady is trying to kill me yet.

· Some combination of buttered noodles and mystery hot dog like or patty meat. Love the noodles, the meat is always a surprise.

· A recent addition, two slices of eggplant with what seems to be roasted garlic on it. Quite good and I’m led to believe that it’s healthy for me too…

That’s it.

Voronezh Moment of the Day

In the food vein: Saturday morning when I woke up, I found a few little critters floating in my juice. Not to be denied I fished them out and powered on. One of the tiny insects even managed to walk away from its near death experience, hopefully all the wiser. So this morning I woke up and found a napkin over my juice. Good, thought I, no bugs this morning! So I took a big gulp and put my mug back down. Next time I looked at it, just cresting the rim of my mug were two half drowned, juice soaked little insects. I look in and there’s two more struggling vainly in the syrupy substance. The rescue operation proceeded as earlier and I enjoyed the rest of my bug free juice. Who knows how many I ingested, but there’s no reason to dwell on such things…