I need to preface this post by saying that I have always been a picky eater.   I wasn’t a picky eater in that I wouldn’t try new things or that I didn’t like vegetables.  I actually loved a lot of vegetables that most kids won’t touch.  I could eat an entire artichoke by myself at eight.  But I’m picky about texture, and I’m not a big fan of meat.  (If you’ve followed my blog for several years, you may recall I used to be vegetarian.)  I don’t like mushrooms because they are spongy or rubbery.  I don’t like the mealy feel of fresh tomatoes and watermelon.  Fruit that I usually love, like apples, pears, peaches, grapes, and cherries, is a no-go if the texture is wrong.  Apparently, this is how I was born.  I used to reject baby food until my mom found a rubber-coated spoon I would eat from.

I also don’t like tea or coffee, even fruity teas and dessert coffees.  This was probably the biggest challenge in Russia, since everyone everywhere offers tea and getting a glass of tap water at a restaurant or someone’s home wasn’t advisable.  I was probably dehydrated and malnourished the entire time I was in Russia, but after going hungry for several days while turning my nose up at unfamiliar foods, I decided to stop acting like a toddler and give everything a try.  I even sipped on a few cups of tea.

Once the decision was made, I became not only an adventurous eater, but I also embraced new experiences like spending the weekend at a rural dacha (garden home) and trying the banya (a group sauna that involved beatings with birch branches to invigorate the skin).  I’ll share all about my weekend at the dacha in another post, but that experience would’ve been miserable had I not made the decision to push outside of my comfort zone.  I look back on those experiences, and I’m proud of my 17-year-old self for giving my 48-year-old self those memories.

Let me start with shopping for groceries.  Since I lived in an apartment with my dad, who would be happy eating MREs (I think he actually did eat some while we were there), I took on the grocery shopping and cooking.  At 17, I was pretty capable in the kitchen.  I’ve always been pretty independent, and I liked cooking whatever I was in the mood to eat.  I mostly cooked breakfast foods (eggs, pancakes, French toast, etc.) and pasta, but I had done some baking and casseroles.  So, Dad and I set out to do some grocery shopping so he could show me the ropes until I was comfortable going by myself.

This is where my dad’s relaxed personality floors me now as a mom of teenagers.  He let me go all over Izhevsk, Russia, as a 17-year-old girl, by myself!  I walked, I rode the tram, I even rode a bus that got me into one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.  I’ll share about that in another post, too.  Yeah, I still think he was a little crazy, but I also appreciate that he gave me independence and knew I was capable.

Shopping for groceries in 1995 in Izhevesk was an experience completely different from a trip to Publix.  They didn’t have one centralized grocery store.  You made your purchases all over the city.  Most of our vegetables were purchased from people sitting on a curb with a cardboard box or basket full of extra produce grown at their dacha.  I often bought zucchini, cantaloupe, and cucumbers, and they were all delicious; usually not a day or two after being picked.  There was a small market where we bought dairy and eggs.

A funny note about eggs…  Eggs weren’t sold in cartons as they are in the US.  They were sold loose or in a small box.  My dad brought an egg carton from the US for storing his fresh eggs, but I hadn’t realized it.  The first time I grabbed a couple of eggs from the carton, I looked at the date and frowned.  “Dad, these eggs are expired.  Like, really expired.”  He gave me an expression like I was an idiot.  “Marian, that carton is from the US.”  Oooooh.  Okay.  Got it.  Yeah, the English writing on the box should’ve clued me in, but that was in the early days of acclimating to life in Russia.

The milk was sold in a bag, so we also kept a plastic jug in the fridge that we’d frequently refill.  The bread, which was bought from a little bakery stall, would be handed to you without any wrapping at all.  Here’s your loaf of bread from my bare hand to yours.  It was all very different from the US, where we are used to hair nets, plastic gloves, and packaging.  I learned to carry a backpack everywhere I went along with some plastic bags, so I had a way to carry my purchases.  Instead of going shopping weekly, I usually picked up individual items as needed or if I was passing by a stall.

(You can see in the picture below that my grandpa, who visited for a couple of weeks, is putting a boule of fresh bread in my backpack.)

There was one small grocery store that was about the size of the grocery section at a gas station.  There were about three rows of shelves, which were about 90% empty.  The groceries that were there were too expensive for most average Russian families to purchase, so the store wasn’t thriving.  I was thankful to see familiar foods, though, and picked up a few things.  I filled my little shopping basket with a 2L bottle of Coke, a couple of boxes of dried pasta, a pack of hot dogs, and a small jar of Hellman’s mayo.  I mean, I was a teenager at a grocery store!

For the first few days, I lived off of fresh bread with mayonnaise and some vegetables I bought from people sitting on the curb.

One of the things that opened me up to Russian foods was our cooking classes.  Every day, we spent time learning the Russian language and culture.  Galina, who was sort of an honorary Russian grandma to everyone, taught us how to make some classic Russian food.  It helped me to see that pelmeni was like ravioli and blinis were like pancakes.

Here’s some of our group making a batch of pelmeni by hand.  I ate a bowl almost every day for lunch at a local cafe.  They were usually filled with lamb or chicken, but I made a point not to ask.  I would just try it and, if I liked it, I would eat it and not worry about what meat the filling was.  The pelmeni pockets, which are pinched similar to tortellini, would be served in a light broth with a dollop of sour cream on top.

We also learned how to make blini, which are Russian pancakes.  Since I worked at Disney World at the time, someone from the group made a Mickey Mouse blini for me.

You can see one of my notebooks on the table in front of me where I was writing down the recipe and taking notes.  I’m not sure what happened to that notebook.

One day, I was walking with my Russian friend, Misha, to the school and spotted a man sitting on the curb next to a cardboard box.  Misha stopped and turned to me, “Do you want to get some ice cream?”  I looked around, not seeing anywhere to purchase ice cream.  “Ummm.  Sure.”  He leaned over and gave money to the man sitting on the curb, who then pulled two small packages wrapped in white paper from his box.  Misha took them both and handed one to me.  I was still a little confused, but I felt the package was cold.  I opened it up and discovered a chocolate-coated vanilla ice cream bar.

I don’t know if it’s because I hadn’t eaten ice cream for a long time or because I had been living off bread and Hellman’s mayo, but the ice cream bar from that cardboard box was the best I had ever eaten.  It was rich and creamy and absolutely delicious.  I’m glad Misha took a picture of me eating the ice cream bar, because you can see how much I was enjoying it.

When we went over to someone’s house for dinner, I would scoop a bit of everything on my plate.  Some of the dishes were easily recognizable, and you’d see them repeatedly.  Since most Russian families had a garden at the dacha, they had cucumbers, tomatoes, and other summer vegetables in abundance.  We were regularly served cucumbers and tomatoes cooked, raw, and mixed in salads.  One of my favorite mystery dishes, though, was a bright pink salad.  I had no idea what it was, but I ate three servings of it and thought about it for decades.  I did a search a few years ago, and I’m pretty sure it was a beet, sour cream, and dill salad.  I have printed up a couple of recipes to try, but I haven’t made it yet.

Another wonderful food discovery was raspberries.  I never really cared for them growing up.  I thought they were too tart and seedy.  When I was staying at the dacha, though, there was a hedge of raspberry bushes that were ripe to perfection.  One of the girls staying at the dacha encouraged me to eat some.  At first, I scrunched my nose and shook my head.  “No, I don’t really like raspberries.”  “Oh, these are the best.”  I remembered my vow to try new things, so I picked one off the bush and popped it in my mouth.  It exploded in my mouth, juicy and sweet.  Okay, I was totally wrong.  I love raspberries.  I became an absolute glutton and ate my fill off that hedge.  There were no collection baskets or rinsing.  Each one went straight from the bush to my mouth.

One fruit I was not a big fan of was currants.  I ate them and drank them in every form, from compotes to jam to pie filling, but I merely tolerated them.  They are a Russian staple, though, and were everywhere.  They even sold currant pies and currant juice at the McDonald’s in Moscow.

We spent a few days in Moscow towards the end of our trip, which I’ll share about in another post, but since I’m sharing about food, I have to include McDonald’s here.  I don’t think I was ever happier to see the golden arches.  It’s not that I really loved McDonald’s, but it was a little piece of home and something familiar.  My mom insisted on taking this picture and thought McDonald’s would want to use it for their advertising.  I never asked them.

I splurged on a Big Mac, fries, and an apple pie.  The pies weren’t the sad baked pies they serve today, but the crispy, freshly fried apple pies they made before everyone pushed low-fat foods on the US population.  Again, it was the best McDonald’s I ever ate.

When I have the opportunity to travel, even if it’s within the US, a big part of that experience for me is the regional food.  I want to have blueberry soda in Maine, cheese grits in South Carolina, and a bagel in New York.  I make a point of trying local food whether I’m excited about it or not.  I’ve tried antelope, chicken feet, snails, and jellyfish, all of which were experiences in trying something new and seeing if they taste better than they sound.

That was one thing I’ve carried with me since my summer in Russia – be open to new culinary experiences.