. . . despite the mounds of evidence that they clearly do. It was fun for the first paragraph or so, but the further I went with my joke conspiracy theory, the more and more it sounded like actual denialist conspiracy theories on the internet.
So I deleted it, but there’s still a rotten taste in my mouth from the experience.
And now I’m gonna go about my day, wondering about people, and just, I dunno. What the fuck is wrong with everyone?
> What the fuck is wrong with everyone? I'm a writer who doesn't write, a dev who barely writes any code, a designer whose days of touching art only see a tiny glimpse every few months or so. AMA, I guess. (heres my soundcloud my insta my youtube channel my artstation page my facebook my github my)
Do you remember the days when you bought mets from the grocery store, you still had to actually cook them? But now they have microwave ready mets. How does that make you feel? Are you old enough to remember looking up old newspapers on microfilm? Did you ever? Are you ever nostalgic for the opportunity to do it again and kind of hate the whole digital archives, despite how they’re much more convenient? I know Europe and Asia have tons of baseball leagues. Does Russia?
You had me look up "mets". Best I got was the baseball team. Help me out here. > Are you old enough to remember looking up old newspapers on microfilm? No, but I wish I had a chance. I like physical things: newspapers, books, photographs... Can't stand virtual keyboards: no tactile feedback. I can print 10 000 words blind on a physical keyboard I'm familiar with. Anyway... Back in my hometown, there was a photostudio where you could develop your film. Two minutes from my grandmother's apartment, on one of the major streets. I vaguely remember going there once or twice with my parents. Our family had a Polaroid in the 90s, so there's a fair few then-freshly-printed photos of my child self, my grandparents (including my Ukrainian grandmother, who came all the way from Donetsk to visit us in the middle of Siberia), my sister when she was but a teenager (now a married woman with a small child), my cousins... The whole lot. I love the idea of a Polaroid camera and the prints it produces. Many people do: hence this whole affair with fake Polaroid pics and fake "film scans"... Digital is fantastic for storage and data. You need physical. I look forward to days where physical paper can also be used as a digital representation of something. Maybe there's an embedded electronic structure that allows one to make "pixels" on the "screen" of a paper sheet. Doesn't need to be woody in nature. Fun fact: you'd often pack your windows with old newspapers in Russia, because winters can be harsh and you'd want to minimize any sort of draft that may occur from poorly-installed wooden windows. It's mostly plastic ones, these days. We used to pack windows at our school, come late autumn. Some of those newspapers were really old: ten, twenty years... A related fun fact: in the uni, the very top of the plastic windows in one particular class had been plastered with newspapers. Which ones? Le Monde, for one. I was fascinated with this little piece of Western Europe just casually hanging there. > I know Europe and Asia have tons of baseball leagues. Does Russia? Mayhaps. I care so little about baseball, I can't be bothered to look up `baseball russia`. That said, that is very much a symbol of America in Russia. It's a very American sport: probably because it's not played a lot. Kinda like rugby. We used to play basketball in school when there wasn't much to do for PE. The boys loved it.
Sorry. Blame my midwest regional terms. Mets are like, you know, bratwurst and hot dogs and stuff. I mean here, they thick like Bratwurst but they’re not bratwurst, tend to be 100% beef, very little if any spices. They’re dense. They’re greasy. They’re delicious. You can dress one up on a bun like a Reuben sandwich and you’re in junk food heaven. You should, if ever given the chance, play with microfilm. It’s so much fun in ways I can’t describe. Either way though, you guys put your newspapers to good use. We tended to use them, along with other things, as firestarters. You had me look up "mets". Best I got was the baseball team. Help me out here.
Makes me wonder if "mets" and "the Mets" are related. Hot dogs are, after all, a popular stadium delicatessen. Or it could be Jewish in origin. It's always one or the other. The best we have here in terms of sausages are "hunter's kolbasi" (охотничьи колбаски): smoked ground meat, like a kolbasa, but long and thin, ready to eat. Mostly for consumption with beer. Hotdogs and the lot, we still do have to cook: there's some microwave food in stores, but the majority is to be cooked by you the customer at home. The US are obsessed with making things easier, cheaper, quicker, and less dirty. Anything to make one feel less uncomfortable. Russia isn't there yet, and I'm ready to bet it never will be, because the economy here sucks too much for such a megaproduction to take place. That being said, most supermarket chains have their own industrial bakeries, each producing goods for that particular location. And because people love to see lots of something on the shelves, you get way too many of most baked goods produced each day. Some of it's probably eaten by the workers of the store, but you can't eat that much, so the rest of it goes to waste. > Either way though, you guys put your newspapers to good use. We tended to use them, along with other things, as firestarters. Old, yellow papers being used to start the brick heater (not a fireplace) is a thing here too. My parents had stacks of those at the dacha, for this specific occasion. (Plastic windows on a log building. That would be Russia for ya.) When you read a weekly newspaper, what else are you going to do?
Definitely had both stroganoff and peroggis. Thought both were like, polish or something. I love both though, they’re great comfort food in the winter, which is probably no coincidence. Made me look up packzis, cause I swore those were polish donuts. They are. Which is fine, cause I love those too.
PIerogi are pretty much pan-slavic, so regional differences account for a lot. Pączki are Polish donuts, but... In this video, a part-Polish Swede makes what's as close to Platonic ideal as I've seen, whose speech sometimes goes this way: Place of origin is near-meaningless at this point. EDIT: He's not Black. I must have somehow confused chefs but not the video? EDIT2: It's not that video/doughnut, but the recipe is pretty damn legit, even if the final product changes. Polish doughnuts are filled with sweet fruit jams (seen everything from strawberry through dog rose to pineapple) and covered in thick glaze based on powdered sugar. Investigation inconclusive.
In my part of the states, Detroit, Michigan, we have a lot of people of Polish descent, and paczki are available only once per year, on the day before lent (generally referred to as “paczki day” around here) and any place that makes one that you’d want to eat usually requires a pre-order. They differ from more traditional donuts in that they’re denser (I think that comes from lard instead of butter), and they’re always filled. No exceptions. Lemon, raspberry and custard are the most common fillings, but you see others here and there. Anyway, just curious if this is anything like the situation in Poland or if this is just a veneration of a thing that’s more everyday in the mother country. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Rest that foot up. I’ve broken a number of bones in my life but never the foot. It’s supposed to be one of the worst.
Oh, it's absolutely a thing here, called Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday, same thing though). All have a jam/custard/cream filling, yes. Every bakery has their own way of making them, so it's hard to generalize beyond glazed/powdered and how much filling went in. For filling, strawberry and raspberry are popular, dog rose is decently common (and my favourite). The weirdest I ever had was with smoked plum jelly, and although I found them revolting (despite liking powidła), they have their fans too. It's not too hard to find others though, from kiwi to caramel pudding, but not all bakeries bother. Some make, say, 50 of 20 flavours each, while others will bank on a sure thing, like strawberries. And thanks. I only broke a finger before, so don't have much reference, but it's definitely an annoying injury.
What's the difference between smoked plum jelly and what is essentially plum jelly? (In Russia, they call it "повидло".)
It's the name from the box, but I'd guess the first one had plums smoked/dried in a smoker before they went into jelly? Kinda like how some people w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶p̶e̶s̶ produce artesian wines from processed raisins? My focus went to 'revolting' bit -- powidla can be friggin delicious in everything from meat gravy to porridge, but when you get a smoky-spicy-bitter mix instead of expected sweet…
Honestly, it sounds delicious if you mix the two. An absolute flavorful of plums. Probably goes really well with meat.
> I've had borscht three or four times and it is not to my taste. heresy
Depends on what you think of these dishes. Some of those are variations of stuff you've seen before – blini being thinner, stuffable, foldable pancakes, for example – but it gets wild fast. Kholodets is jellified meat broth stuffed with (in my experience) ground cooked meat. Zucchini caviar – so wild that it doesn't have a Wikipedia page – is a sandwich filling. The soups are interesting. I'd recommend the borsch, but that's famously a Ukrainian dish, and that's how you should eat it. (Russians just don't make it the same. But still, try it with sour cream at least once.) Okroshka is bread juice (kvas) used as broth for a cold soup. Rassolnik I like very much: it's deliciously sour. The salads are fun, too. Sel'd pod shuboi (aka the Dressed Herring salad) is fuckin' everywhere in Russia. Surprisingly good, despite its look. Same with the Olivier salad, which I thought surely is international. I'm a fan of vinegret: boiled vegetables with a bit of oil and vinegar – simply yet tasty. (And, again: sour. I'm sure you're seeing the pattern.) If I have to recommend one thing, it'd be syrniki: fried pancakes of quark aka curd cheese aka cottage cheese, usually sweet. Lots more to explore with that first link. Find what looks the most wild to you, and go for it. If you can find yourself some decent Russian cuisine on your side of the pond, you might just get a taste of what might survive Russia's loss in the war.
That's been mentioned here before...jellified meat broth
I'm not calling you out, it's just weird and I like sharing it. I can see how ground meat in jellied stock became a dish - concentrated stock will cool into jelly all on it's own, mix some of the meat back in and make it pretty, there you go. But the old Jello™ recipes happened because marketing needed to move more Jello™ and so Jello™ could now be part of every dish at every meal. Who wants a slice of cold kidney beans quivering at you during supper:
Every single woman over 40 in my family has at some point said something to the effect of "Mmm, how tasty! Try it!" while pointing at a kholodets. Anything with the consistency of jelly that isn't sweet is the number one way of turning me off, gastronomically.
Have you or kleinbl00 or ThurberMingus ever had souse? It’s basically gelatanized, uh . . . lesser desired pig bits, as a sandwich filling. It sounds terrible, but it goes great on rye with mustard, but eaten sparingly. It’s delicious, but overwhelming, so a little goes a long way.
Never had souse. My Dad's family used to slaughter hogs every year and they would toss the head in a giant pot with whatever else was left after butchering the cuts for smoking, lard, and sausage. The start of the process is the same as souse, except that at the end enough cornmeal is added to prevent it from becoming aspic. Then after it's cooled and set, instead of eating it cold, it was sliced, fried, and eaten for breakfast. It's usually called scrapple, but they called it panhaus I think.
That's... kholodets, basically. good fucking god the time it takes to bridge the very bridgeable culinary islands