Каша

I have been wanting to write this blog post for quite a while, but it has taken me until today to collect all of the photos for it. 

One of my favorite foods that is served in the cafeteria at the academy is каша (pronounced kasha). I think of каша almost as its own food group because of the breadth and diversity of what qualifies as каша; there are a lot of different types, and there is some form of каша that is appropriate to eat at any time of day. As long as you have taken a grain and cooked it by adding liquid and boiling it, it can qualify as каша.

Каша is sometimes a part of our lunch or dinner. When it is, it is made from buckwheat and looks like this.

A lot of the other international students seem not to like the buckwheat very much, but I really do. I think it's a bit like quinoa, but bigger and less crunchy. I am always happy when I see that buckwheat is being served. 

Каша is always a part of our breakfast. Breakfast is a very predictable meal, always yogurt, bread, cheese, tea or coffee, and каша, but it is never exactly the same from one day to the next, since there is always a different type of breakfast каша being served. It is always some sort of porridge that is sweetened and tastes as if it was made with milk, but we never have the same type as the day before.

It took me at least three weeks to figure out how many different types of каша we have for breakfast. (There are five). It took me until today to finally get photographs of all of them. Here they are!

This is the каша that we had this morning. It is sweetened oatmeal. This one, despite the fact that it is the closest to what I would eat in the US, is actually my least favorite. That's not to say that it's bad; I just like the other types better.

This one looks almost the same but I promise that it is different. I don't know exactly what it is, but it tastes a bit like rice. 

This is the каша that we have on Sundays. It is white, though the picture is doing a bad job of showing that. It has an unusual texture, as if it has tiny tapioca balls in it. It's pretty tasty, and kind of fun to eat, too.

This каша is yellow and I am 99% sure that it is made out of corn. It tastes sort of like what it would be like if you dipped some cornbread in warm milk and then ate it.

This is my favorite каша. I think that it has  wheat bran in it, because I eating it makes me feel like I am eating a liquid bran muffin. That is a good thing because I really love bran muffins.

Каша is tasty. That's all I have left to say!