Catherine the Great Needs a Diet (The Tsar Blini)

What would I do without dear Carol of Retired? No one told me! who is on top of every International Food Holiday! Since today is an International Pancakes Day, I am repeating this post about a great woman who loved her pancakes. Well, she loved Tsar Blini, but blini is but a Russian version of…

Catherine the Great Needs a Diet (The Tsar Blini)

We are starting the Women History Month with an International Pancake Day. If there is a deep philosophical meaning to this coincidence, I fail to discern it, but here is a great woman who loved her pancakes. Well, she loved Tsar Blini, but blini is but a Russian version of pancakes, right? A petite, slender…

Fireworks and Fish

Happy, healthy, and safe 2021, Beautiful People! Before all the festivities on Ocean Drive started (and ended up being cancelled anyway), we had escaped to our favorite Sunset Cove Resort on Key Largo. We have visited this place for years when we used to sail there, anchor the boat, and come ashore for a day…

Classics Also Quarrel: Russian Pot Pie

The rich also cry, as we all know. It is less known, however, that the classics also quarrel. We tend to perceive them as larger than life, rather not susceptible to flaws and frailties  of us, ordinary humans.  Take, for example, Leo Tolstoy, “the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced” (Mahatma…

Vinaigrette – a Russian Winter Salad

He is called Father Frost or General Frost. He lives in Russia, and he could be very cruel, especially to those who do not show proper respect to him. He has defeated many invaders, from the khans, to Napoleon, to Nazi Germany. He likes to decorate fields and forests, covering them in pristine snow and…

Kolobok, Kolobok, from the Grandma I Escaped…

Once upon the time, in a magical land of great forests, Onion Domes and warrior princes, there lived an old couple, Grandma and Grandpa. One day, Grandpa says to Grandma, “Bake me a pie.” “With what? – sighs the old woman, – we have nothing.” “Sweep the cupboards, scratch the bins, let’s see what you…