There's a frood who really knows where his towel is

The first rule of intergalactic travel, according to Douglas Adams, is "don't panic." This is undoubtedly good, but hopelessly impossible advice for life abroad, so we're just going to move right along to the second rule: always know where your towel is. A towel is the interstellar hitchhiker's universal passport. A good metaphor comes to mind for international travelers, which is your actual, um, passport. But for most countries I've been to, the towel is infinitely more useful. According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not only is the towel your ticket to space rides in spacecraft in SPACE--already pulling a lot more weight than my passport--I can use it for warmth as I " bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta"; I can "sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon"; or if I am especially enterprising, "use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth or wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat." These are just a few of the myriad possibilities of life with a towel.

My passport, in contrast, allows me to cross some imaginary lines without being shot by some very non-imaginary guns--but not always! (Hello to our North Korean friends.) To be fair, it also occasionally gets me preferential treatment at currency exchanges--but not always! (Hello to our British nemeses.) In Russia, the requirement that you carry your passport around at all times is a critical driver of economic growth, because it allows the police to extort bribes when they catch you without it. Woo. Compared to the towel, my passport is looking mighty underachieving.

That was, until I came to Israel.

Some things you need your passport to do in Israel:

-Enter the country
-Exit the country
-Get a visa to work for no money
-Pick up a package from the post office
-Join the gym
-Acquire a discount card from the grocery store
-Purchase a public transportation card

Your towel will help you do none of these things. Moreover, your towel isn't even that useful for normal, towel-like functions. This is currently my favorite part of the Internet:

Drying off is not a goal with which Israelis regularly encounter difficulties.

But do you know where they do encounter difficulties? Getting anything else in life the fuck done because you have to have your passport on you for everything. Why does my grocery store need it to give me discounts? Why does the gym care if I've been to Cuba? Of what possible use can my visa be to my bus driver? This isn't just a rant, I actually know the answers to these questions.

You see, when these places take your passport, they never just glance at it and give it back to you. They give you forms to fill out with all of your personal information, then they take your passport and forms to a mysterious back room for several minutes before returning it to you, with no explanation of what they have done with it in the meantime. Possibly because I don't have the language skills to ask. The point is, as Princess Leia once astutely observed, they're tracking us.

No doubt the Israeli government would dispute the notion that they're following my bus transfers in the hopes that I'll lead them to the rebel base. I've had some experience with how the Israeli government justifies the tabs they keep on the population, because I had to go through a rigorous background check to get my security clearance to work at the Supreme Court. Yes, the court officer asked me a series of very rigorous questions, all of which could be basically paraphrased as, "Have you ever talked to an Arab person ever?" and the penetrating follow up, "Good God, why?" Then she checked the box for alcohol use without bothering to ask me about it, made me waive my medical confidentiality, and sent me on my way.

Let's back up to the part where she made me waive my medical confidentiality. I made a bit of a stink about this, which surprised the security officer almost as much as encountering a Jewish person with no family or friends in Israel, not to mention one who had talked to Arabs ever. After failing to soothe my ruffled feathers with the ol' classic "If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind if we comb through the results of your last pap smear" line (note: if I had anything to hide, I certainly wouldn't be hiding it there), she assured me, in a pretty legit display of quick thinking, that they would never look at these records unless I had a medical emergency at the Court and they needed to know how to treat it. I suppose because having the security guards access my medical records themselves in this situation would somehow, in an amazing feat of efficiency and competency by the intelligence bureaucracy, be more useful than calling an ambulance?

Uh-huh. And the bus service is tracking my movements in case I'm on a bus that gets blown up and they need to identify the victims. No, I'm pretty sure the buses are recording my whereabouts in case I am, in fact, the terrorist, and the security officers who want a peek at my medical history are about equally concerned with my personal well-being. But with the crack team of grocery store cashiers, bus drivers, and postmen on the case, they know I'd be a fool to try anything. Next time someone in Israel asks me for my passport, I'm handing them a towel.


Mossad, this one's for you:

Note: I sat on this post for a several days, until I found out that I did, in fact, pass my security check. I may be indignant, and as my friend Miguel has helpfully noted, functionally illiterate, but I'm not stupid.

Better than Birthright

A conversation at the grocery store:

Clerk: Blachdy blach blach blachdy blach.*
Me: I'm sorry, I don't speak Hebrew.
Clerk: Ah, English...Please consider making purchase of excellent store credit card, receive 5% discount off all store brand items! Card is free, excellent discounts!
Me: Do you need an Israeli passport to get the credit card?
Clerk: Ah, yes.
Me: Sorry, I'm an American citizen.
Clerk: Oh...Well, please make Aliyah, and then receive store credit card for all discounts!

This is by far the most convincing argument for making Aliyah that I've ever heard.

*("Blach" is Hebrew for "blah.")

My kitchen is Hogwarts

My roommates are studying to be Jewish school teachers, so the apartment is kosher and the common areas are Shomer Shabbat (i.e., no electricity on Saturdays). I knew this going in, but there's a difference between intellectually acknowledging a radical lifestyle change and actually arriving in a country after 18 hours of physical travel and 7 hours of time travel and realizing that you can't make some toast right now because God says "no." (I unintentionally scheduled my arrival for a Jewish holiday, many of which are celebrated without the benefits of electricity. Or carrying. Or stringed instruments. If you're a time traveler for whom these things are important, plan accordingly.)

Like I said, I did have advance warning, and like any true member of the Scooby-Doo generation, I had a plan. My plan was to basically go vegetarian for the summer. This would allow me to handle with ease the main rule of the kosher kitchen, which is not to mix meat and dairy. Actually, since my arrival, I've incidentally eaten entirely vegan, so all I've cooked is pareve (food that is neither meat, dairy, nor tref), which is universally kosher.

I arrived on Sunday. By Tuesday, I had managed to de-kosher the dishes. How did this happen? Let me explain.

The Jewish kitchen is governed by the laws of kashrut, or, as I have come to think of it, magic. This magic is a magic of transfiguration. Not only must meat and dairy foods be kept separate, but so must meat and dairy cookware, because vegetables that are prepared in a dairy pot become dairy, and vegetables prepared in a meat pot become meat. Hence, one can, as I have done, prepare pareve stir-fry that de-koshers, or as the Jews say, confuses, or as I say, magics my dishes. How? Prepare part of the stir-fry in a dairy frying pan and the other part in a meat wok, and then combine in the same pot. Boom, baby! Your pot is no longer a simple kosher pot, but something altogether more sinister and alarming, in no small part because it's also apparently developed the ability to feel. If mixing green beans from a meat pot and peppers from a dairy pot can confuse a dish, if you put shrimp in it, does the pot level up to outright hostility? The sages don't say. This is how one performs kosher magic.

This magic is way more powerful than that boasted by other religions. To give you some perspective, Jesus turned water into wine. Child's play. I can turn water into hot dogs, just by boiling it in the wrong pot. I can turn quinoa into alfredo sauce and chickpeas into cheese balls, all with the power of my bewitched cutlery. It's like a superpower that I can only use for evil, since the only apparent use of this magic is to de-sanctify my dishes, the re-kashering of which requires an entirely new magic ritual of its very own.

There are some people so afraid of this awesome responsibility, that they keep THREE SEPARATE KITCHENS (meat, dairy, Passover) in order to accidentally avoid triggering their wizardry. My roommate vouches for having been in one of these houses. This cannot possibly be necessary, or else my roommate's acquaintances would be the only actually kosher people. Bear in mind that most of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are on welfare and probably keep it to a modest number of kitchens, unless the Orthodox Jews live in apartments that are actually only kitchen. I have not heard that this is the case.

I'm pretty sure I've managed to control my powers since the Miracle of the Stir-Fry, but there's just no telling when they'll next escape my grasp. I'll never understand why magic in the Potter-verse is so hard. The kids have to bring every ounce of concentration to bear just to transfigure a simple potato into steak, and most of them suck at it. I have to concentrate that hard just not to engage in spectacular displays of sorcery every time I turn on the stove. Where's my acceptance to Hogwarts?

Kids, pay attention in Hebrew school, or you will end up eating wax paper

I've decided to keep this blog and start updating it from my current location in Jerusalem, Israel, rather than start a new one, mostly because I've already got five defunct blogs in my Blogger account, and I felt like my Internet was getting cluttered. Jerusalem doesn't exactly get any white nights, but then again, neither did Russia in December 2008, when I started this blog. Please direct all complaints to Rupert Murdoch. About anything, not just this.

So, the first thing I notice about living in Israel is that living in foreign country when you can't read the alphabet is tricky. Well, to be specific, living in a foreign country where you can technically read the alphabet, but not easily, and you can't sound out (and therefore easily recognize or memorize) any of the words, because they aren't written with vowels, is tricky. Nowhere was this more apparent to me than at the grocery store. There, I was forcefully reminded of a book from my childhood called "The Man Who Couldn't Read," which was, intuitively, about a man who couldn't read, who depends on his wife for all of the shopping. One day, she leaves for a trip, and he has to go to the store himself, where he figures out what items to buy based on the shape of their packaging. Thus he ends up with wax paper instead of spaghetti, and all other kinds of inedibles. My first thought when reflecting on this book is, what kind of grocery store is this, where the wax paper and spaghetti are indistinguishable? I mean, spaghetti mostly comes in containers that have a see-through panel, or at least a picture of wheat. Wax paper containers come with a tin-foil saw blade. Saw v. wheat. Why didn't he go for the wheat? Fool.

My second thought is, holy shit, shopping for groceries when all you can do is rely on pictures and see-through panels is really effing hard. Okay, I found the spaghetti, but I can't tell which brand cost what without painstakingly, letter by letter (or as far as I'm concerned, squiggle by squiggle), comparing the price sticky to the labels, and I still don't know what the sales mean. More importantly, the pictures only get you so far. This can I am holding, with the tomatoes on the front: is it whole tomatoes? Diced tomatoes? Tomato puree? Tomato paste? Rat poison for your tomatoes? Only time, a can-opener, and daring will tell. This brown-looking bread: is it whole wheat? Honey wheat? Multigrain? White bread in brown-tinted packaging? I don't even know what is happening in the dairy aisle. There are tubs of stuff, some of which I cannot digest, some of which I don't want to digest, and some of which are precious food items that I do want to digest, but all in utterly indistinguishable packaging. Thank God (so much easier here!) soymilk is imported from some foreign brand that doesn't label their products in hieroglyphics.

Sidenote: For some reason, the grocery store sells only tiny jars of critical foods like spaghetti sauce and only jumbo bottles of shampoo and body wash. This is aggravating now, but after the End Times come (and let's face it, the chances are higher here than anywhere else), and we have only our pre-existing stock to rely on, the Israelis are going to smell the nicest the longest.

Anyways, new plan: go to a firm next summer, make all of the money, call Pat Sajak, and buy some vowels to donate to Israel. If I never update again, you know what was in the tomato can.

Pop Goes My Heart

So, I have now moved apartments 3.5 times since coming to Russia and have washed up in a gen-yoo-ine communal apartment in the center. You may think this update, coming after yet another mysteriously long hiatus, is going to be about wacky fun with my seven—count ‘em, seven!—neighbors coupled with some historical musings, but it is actually just more rambling about TV.

You see, my landlord finally purchased a television for the kitchen, which we broke in in spectacular fashion the only way I think you can break in a television in the kitchen of a communal apartment in a republic of the former Soviet Union: Eurovision!

Eurovision is a competition that pits mostly youthful performers from across Europe wearing spray tans and often not much else against one another in a battle of…um, well, what exactly does it take to make a run at Eurovision? Past answers to this question have included, but are not limited to interpretive dance (possibly interpreted by Howard the Duck), shiny pants, some really excellent hats, a pop ballad with lyrics ambiguously insulting Vladimir Putin, and as of this year, a fiddle. (For an illustrative look at four of these five criterion, see picture below.)



Since every point I just rattled off here can also be found in the dictionary under the heading “Russian Culture,” it should come as no surprise that Russia won last year. Winning Eurovision is a big deal. If you are very lucky, you might become an ironic internet sensation among east coast college students. If you are even luckier, you will become ABBA.

But most importantly, your country wins the right to host the show next year. The first thing you need to know is that many residents of St. Petersburg are angry that the government decided to hold the contest in Moscow. It really belongs in St. Petersburg, because this is the country’s cultural capital. That isn’t the first thing you need to know about Eurovision, it’s just the first thing you need to know about Russian culture.

There are several life experiences that only a viewing of Eurovision can offer. For example, you have never experienced country music until you have experienced it sung by a Dane doing grand pliés in pants trained experts identified as “very tight.” Eighties swing revival pop is not truly appreciated until performed by a German shimmying in pants our panel of experts identified as “tighter and shinier than the Dane’s pants.”

As the German example illustrates, performers frequently appear in some form of ethnic dress, often re-created entirely from sequins. The fine milk-maid tradition remains strong in Europe, as do the venerable institutions of the Madame and her male counterpart, the Bachelorette Party Stripper.

Particularly exciting moments of this year’s contest included the winning Norwegian performance, featuring fiddling and the human juggling of the backup dancers (not at the same time); the Bosnian performer walking forward in a particularly slow and purposeful manner, sparking wild applause from the audience; and the disqualification of Malta for fielding a contestant who could actually sing.

Low-lights included Great Britain’s choice to feature a song written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which represented a new achievement for the songwriter by actually being too bad for Eurovision. Seriously, the only thing that made watching it bearable was when the singer strayed too close to one of the four animatedly bowing violinists on stage with her, who enthusiastically bowed her in the boob.

Almost as bad was the violent suppression by the Moscow police of gay-rights protesters outside the concert for promoting, according to the Mayor, “moral degradation.” This while the entrant from Moldovia pranced about the stage in her abbreviated milk-maid’s costume, while a troupe of besequined yodelers skipped and flicked behind her. Albania meanwhile presented a young girl in a tutu who spent most of her number being groped by a mime clad head-to-toe in sequined green latex. (This is, I assume, traditional Albanian dress.) But oh yeah, it’s the gay pride parade that’s responsible for the problems with the Youth of Today.

So to end this on a not-about-television note, the modern Russian exhibits an obliviousness to irony that would make Gogol role in his grave. (Undead zombie Gogol, by the way, reverts back to Gogol’s pre-crazy-religious-awakening days.) This is probably worth a whole blog entry of its own (or an entry on a blog not committed to total inanity), but the Russian relationship with the gay community would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad. Because basically, your average Russian man is a tight-pants-wearing, hair-gel-using, leather-enthusing, Eurovision-loving, raging homophobe. You plunk Vlad, smarmy Russian ladies man, down in New York City, and I guarantee you that he will not be attracting the attention of the gender that he’s used to. Obviously this isn’t to say that all gay men are tight-pants-wearing, hair-gel-using, leather-enthusing, Eurovision-loving, raging Vlads. But it is to say that there sure aren’t a lot of American straight men who would fit that description. Think about that, Vlad, next time you “woo!” at a Norwegian with a fiddle.

Alive and Well (Fed). Sort of.

Some embarrassingly large number of weeks ago, I posed the tantalizing cliff-hangers, “If not mayo, what exactly do I eat?” and “Is my grandmother offended by the level of profanity in this blog entry?” My grandmother, once again demonstrating why she gets “grand” appended to her name while I am universally known in Russia as “Eh-bby,” actually answered that last question, whereas I tried to distract you by talking about salt. I wish I could say that this entry comes to you now from a newfound determination to update my blog in a timely fashion. But actually I’ve been sitting on it for about three months, waiting until this, the fatal moment when my illegally streamed “Dancing with the Stars” broadcast cut out unexpectedly, to finally polish it up and shove it out the door to make it’s way in the cold, hard world. Be gentle.

My decision to categorically close my refrigerator to mayo stems in large part from my experience in Russia over the summer of 2006, when the mayo flowed, free and plentiful, from the grocery store aisles through my host mother’s cooking, finally lodging in my arteries, where I am convinced it remains to this day. So naturally, I was relieved at the thought that this time around, I would be doing my own cooking. My sanguinity lasted until my arrival, at which time the obvious corollary to this point presented myself, which is that I would be doing my own cooking.

Disclaimer for those proceeding further: I’m serious about the “sitting on this entry for three months” thing. The situation, while not a gourmand’s paradise, is not quite so dire as I present it below. I do, however, live on in the hopes that I’ll be able to get “Dancing with the Stars” back at any moment, so I can’t be bothered to make serious changes. Suffice to say, I’ve figured out at least two more dishes, but not how to stop burning the garlic. Anyway.

Despite my extreme lack of experience in the kitchen, there are a number of modern cooking utensils that I am enough aware of to miss acutely. Chief among these is the garlic press. The garlic press is a fantastic invention that allows you to pulverize clove after clove of garlic into your food with an ease and alacrity that spectators may find positively dangerous. This is assuming, of course, that you aren’t trying to overload the garlic press, in which case you will require the hand strength of a thousand very burly men to get it to operate, or at the very least, you will require the use of both hands. And yet, an overloaded garlic press is bliss itself compared to the complete absence of garlic presses in one’s life. I cannot even begin to describe to you the annoyance of having to chop into tiny fragments each and every tiny clove of garlic that I want to put into my food. And you can never do it in just one round of chopping. Oh no. To achieve perfect garlic pulverization, you need to slice all your cloves, put them in a pile, run the knife through them again, wipe the knife off, scoop the garlic back into a pile from the far corners of the cutting board to which it has fled, knife through it again, wipe the knife off, and then go back and individually slice away at all the huge chunks you’ve somehow missed during your earlier ministrations. Now assume that your knife is dull, there is no knife-sharpener in the kitchen, and you can’t even begin to imagine how you might say “knife-sharpener” in Russian, even if you wanted to pay for one, which, by the way, you don’t. It’s at the point where I have drastically cut down on the amount of garlic I use, purely because I seriously can’t be bothered. This may not sound like such a problem, but allow me to show you few more glimpses into my life in the kitchen, and you’ll start to see this for the tremendous gastronomic catastrophe it is.

Without further ado, I present the recipes for three totally edible meals in heavy rotation at Chez Moi. Astute readers will notice some themes and motifs. There will be a test.

House Specialty (i.e., Pelmene, which are sort of large ravioli/dumpling things that are more delicious than they deserve to be, having been invented by Russians)
(Note: This recipe was the first one I developed, which is why it’s the house specialty, well, that and it takes the least amount of time and effort you could expend and still be said to be “cooking.” The point being, it predates the epic purchase of the water filter.)

Ingredients
Pelmene
Tomatoes
Garlic
Onions
Olive Oil
Salt
Prayer

Steps:
1. Fill pot with water from sink. Promise self to find water filter soon. In the meantime, pray.
2. Place pot on stove.
3. Remove pot from stove. Light stove. Replace pot on stove. Stupid gas stove.
4. Peel and chop as many cloves of garlic as you can bring yourself to do (no more than 3).
5. Peel and chop onion into as tiny chunks as you can bring yourself to do (not very tiny).
6. Place sauce pan on stove. Cover bottom of saucepan with olive oil.
7. Repeat step 3.
8. Throw garlic and onion into saucepan. Poke tentatively at mixture with spatula.
9. Throw pelmene in boiling water.
10. Wonder briefly just how bad for you pelmene are. Throw more into water.
11. Burn garlic. Curse loudly.
12. Chop tomato into medium-sized chunks. Throw into saucepan. Be dubious about quality of final product.
13. Optional step (to do only if remembered): Throw in salt.
14. Turn off stove, fish pelmene onto plate with stupidly tiny little strainer. Pour sauce over pelmene.
15. Eat! Be proud of yourself, you cooked something!

Advantages
This one has a special place in my heart because, like I said, it’s the first thing I did in the kitchen that in any way involved the chemical transformation of one or more ingredients. (So, for example, my previous experimentation with putting granola into yogurt didn’t count.) Okay, so I won’t be breaking it out at my next dinner party, but hey! It was completely, thoroughly edible!

Disadvantages
And there’s not a whole lot more than that that can be said for it, at least until I figure out how not to burn the garlic.

Stir Fry a la Soy Sauce

Ingredients
Garlic
Onion
Rice
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Pepper
Soy Sauce
0 eggplants

Steps:
1. Go to store. Note shockingly high price of eggplant. Do not buy any eggplant.
2. Go home. Retrieve other ingredients from fridge and lay out on counter. Survey small number and sorry appearance of your vegetables with dismay.
3. Eight dollars for an eggplant! Who do they think they are kidding? Whom, even?
4. Fill filter with water. Wait for water to trickle down. Pour water into pot.
5. Repeat step 5.
6. Notice that you have put too much water in the pot. Make face.
7. Decide not to pour water out and risk going through arduous filtration process again. Place pot on stove.
8. Remove pot from stove. Light stove. Replace pot on stove. Stupid gas stove.
9. Peel and chop as many cloves of garlic as you can bring yourself to do (no more than 3).
10. Peel and chop onion into medium-sized slices.
11. Place sauce pan on stove. Cover bottom of saucepan with olive oil.
12. Repeat step 9.
13. Wonder if you should really get out the bigger saucepan.
14. Nah.
15. Throw garlic and onion into saucepan. Poke tentatively at mixture with spatula.
16. Realize that you have no idea how to cook rice. Instantly regret foolhardy and overconfident purchase of rice in a bag instead of instant rice.
17. Oh well. Open rice bag. Be sure to fling as much rice all over the counter and floor as possible. Throw some rice in pot.
18. That doesn’t look like very much rice. Throw some more in pot. Throw some more on the floor.
19. Where were we with the vegetables again? Go check.
20. Burn garlic. Curse loudly.
21. Chop mushrooms.
22. Chop stem off broccoli. Be aghast at significantly reduced quantity of broccoli for consumption. Will inclusion of chopped up broccoli stem ruin stir-fry or provide budget-saving extra broccoli density? Ponder.
23. Chop up the stem.
24. Hmmm. Which goes in first, broccoli or mushrooms?
25. Dump both broccoli and mushrooms into stir-fry. Be sure to overflow saucepan. Curse. Poke vigorously at mixture with spatula. Make mental note to use bigger saucepan next time.
26. Add copious amounts of soy sauce to mixture. Wonder if it will just burn off, leaving nothing but salty residue behind. Oh dear. Too late.
27. Be dubious about stir-fry with only one spice. Sprinkle in pepper, just to be on the safe side.
28. Develop concern about the high proportion of water to rice. Maybe rice is like cous cous and has to absorb extra water? Should rice be completely cooked before commencement of water absorption process? Or does rice finish cooking during absorption? Is rice supposed to be al dente? What, exactly, does al dente taste like, when applied to rice? Perhaps final result of water absorption test will answer all questions. Turn rice off.
29. Attempt to stir vegetables with mounting sense of futility. Underline, bold, and italicize mental note about saucepan. Turn off veggies.
30. Check rice. Discover limits of rice absorption capacity. Strain excess water through stupidly tiny little strainer. Holy shit that’s a lot of rice.
31. Put rice and stir-fry on plate. Serve with extra soy sauce on side if necessary. Success, you made something mostly healthy!

Advantages
No salad necessary! In a country whose culinary motto is If It Isn’t Mayo, It Isn’t Food, I consider this dish a total coup. Also, I’ve never made a stir fry by myself in my life, so I feel an extra-tingly sense of accomplishment when I make it, which helps me eat it.

Disadvantages
Despite being cooked through, some bits of broccoli mysteriously ended up tasting about 5 degrees cooler than the rest of the meal, which was odd. I still don’t know from al dente with rice (slightly less grainy than undercooked rice, slightly more grainy than overcooked rice? What does can this term possibly mean when applied to something that tastes grainy no matter what you do to it?), though I choose to believe that I have achieved it. Also, there’s only so much soy sauce I can consume in one meal and still pretend to be eating more healthily than the average Russian.

Spaghetti with Sauce with Stuff

Ingredients
Spaghetti
1 can of canned tomatoes (Is there any other kind of tomato that comes in a can? Discuss.)
Garlic
Onions
Mushrooms
Salt
Pepper
Some stuff that I’m pretty sure is sugar, but I’m not sure that I should be cooking with
Olive Oil

Steps:
1. Fill filter with water. Wait for water to trickle down. Pour water into pot.
2. Repeat step 1.
3. Notice that you have put too much water in the pot. Make face.
4. Decide not to pour water out and risk going through arduous filtration process again. Place pot on stove.
5. Remove pot from stove. Light stove. Replace pot on stove.
6. Peel and chop as many cloves of garlic as you can bring yourself to do (no more than 3).
7. Peel and chop onion into medium-sized slices.
8. Place sauce pan on stove. Cover bottom of saucepan with olive oil.
9. Repeat step 5. @*&#! gas stove.
10. Throw garlic and onion into saucepan. Poke tentatively at mixture with spatula.
11. Notice that water has been boiling for probably 5 or 10 minutes. Note with satisfaction that water now appears to be at appropriate level. Put some pasta in.
12. Survey pasta. Put some more in.
13. Burn garlic. Curse loudly.
14. Open can of tomatoes. Pour into saucepan.
15. Chop some mushrooms into sauce.
16. Recall just how much mushrooms shrink while cooking. Chop some more into sauce.
17. Poke at mixture with spatula with increasing confidence and enthusiasm.
18. Accidentally fling tomato sauce all over counter. Curse loudly.
19. Add salt and pepper. Taste mixture. Make face.
20. Go looking for sugar. Don’t find any. Find brown grainy things. Taste. Decide that they are sugar. Toss some in sauce. Pray.
21. Strain spaghetti in stupidly tiny little strainer and try not to pour entire contents of meal into sink. Mostly, but not entirely succeed.
22. Put sauce on spaghetti on plate (not in that order). Serve with discouragingly wilted salad. Revel in deliciousness of your home cooking.

For a variant on this recipe, replace steps 6 through 11 and 14 through 19 with the following:

1. Go to store. Purchase low-quality pasta sauce for vastly exorbitant sum.
2. Heat on stove.
3. Note that we are not kidding about the low-quality of this pasta sauce. It is made by Heinz.

Advantages
It’s spaghetti! What else is there to say? What drawbacks could there be?

Disadvantages
Well, I am the one cooking it. The sauce ends up being sort of bland because I don’t understand spices in English and haven’t yet worked myself up to purchasing any spicing I don’t immediately recognize on sight, which pretty much limits me to pepper.* Note that this rule does not extend to salt, as I cannot, on sight, tell it apart from sugar. Fortunately, there was some salt (and no white sugar) in the apartment when I arrived, but the supply is dwindling fast. Will desperation drive me to finally work up the energy to look up the Russian words for “basil” and “oregano”? Or will my pasta sauce increasingly become indistinguishable from tomato paste with things floating in it? And most importantly, when will some combination of the receipt of my next paycheck, a reduction in price, and the onset of scurvy drive me to finally purchase the eggplant I so desire? Stay tuned!

*Now you understand the magnitude of the garlic problem.

Things that I wish Russians would do that they don’t: Salt the damn sidewalk outside of my apartment

This dereliction of duty confuses me. I come from a land where the slightest hint of a snowflake begets the marshalling of a hundred snowplows to battle. I know the Russian government is in general non-responsive to specific citizen demands, but I’m not asking for more state television time for opposition parties, a serious investigation into the execution of journalists critical of the administration, or a permit to hold a protest. I can’t hold a protest because I can’t remain standing long enough to register my complaint. Perhaps that is why the city has chosen to leave the ten blocks between my apartment and my workplace frozen solid and slicked smooth. They are either trying to clamp down on actions threatening to the dignity state or attempting to break the record for world’s largest Slip ‘N Slide.

You know, there are spicing shortages in Russia, but salt is not among them. It’s not as if the Russian government needs to cumin the sidewalk. I would understand the difficulty of laying hands on a vast store of, say, tumeric in Russia, a country which tends to sell spice by the food to which you are to apply it (“vegetable seasoning,” “chicken seasoning,” “mayonnaise seasoning,” etc.). But salt is considered an all-times, all-foods, all-purpose flavoring option. Saltiness is not a concept with which Russians have difficulty. Maybe the government is flummoxed by the array of salty things available at the grocery store. Do they purchase just plain salt? Or do they go with “chicken seasoning” (salt that smells like chicken)? Would “fish seasoning” (salt that smells like fish) effectively mask the citywide smell of rancid diesel, or just replace it with something new and altogether more terrifying? If they’re so paralyzed by indecision, they should just put out a neighborhood alert, calling on dwellers to fling their leftovers out the window, the salt from which would no doubt liquefy the ice in an instant and, in addition, satiate the stray cat population. If the government doesn’t act soon, I will shortly be forced to barge into the nearest apartment I can find, grab a leftover chicken breast from the stovetop (you know what, I’m sure it will have been there for three days, they won’t miss it), and fling it before me every time I take a step.

Failing that, my other option is to buy a pair of fabulously impractical black, knee-high stiletto boots, since these evidently have the best traction of any footwear in the entire country. I’m wobbling in my snow boots and these Russian Amazons just stride past me on three-inch-heels as though Tyra Banks were sitting ten feet away, judging their comparative levels of “fierce.” Meanwhile, I have learned to anticipate which dips in the sidewalk are particularly treacherous, which does not actually relieve the difficulty of navigating them, since stepping into the street results in no change in iciness and only adds oncoming motorists to my increasingly lengthy list of things likely to result in an imminent loss of verticality.

Perhaps what I am saying is that my butt hurts from when I slipped and fell on it yesterday. At least now you’ll know what happened if this blog doesn’t update again until spring: it’s safe to assume that I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.