Food, Glorious Food!

This post has two purposes, which I am going to begin by stating. Purpose number one: I have some photos that I've been wanting to share for a while but just haven't gotten the chance to. And I really want to post them. Purpose number two: Way way way way way back at the beginning of last month (yikes!), in my post I Really Am Trying to Learn Russian, I promised some explanations which I just realized that I never actually gave. Oops. My apologies for that. Anyway, both of these things conveniently involve food, food, and more food, so I'm going to fulfill the promise I made and get to share the photos I've been waiting soooo long to post all at the same time.

Ok. Here is the photo I posted at the beginning of October. It shows a hypothetical breakfast that I might have eaten, though mine usually looks pretty different.

(Here's what the breakfast from the cafeteria looks like... bread and cheese, yogurt (unfortunately containing gelatin, which I don't eat because I'm vegetarian), каша (pronounced kasha; porridge made from any grain imaginable), and tea/coffee/hot chocolate).

Back to the first picture, though. Two of the things in the picture, the ones that aren't the fruits, are творог and сырок. I never actually explained what those are. 

Творог, pronounced tvarok, is technically a cheese. You can buy it in different varieties, but none of them really fit into the general description of what I think of when I picture some cheese. The type that I have in my photo is much like strong Greek yogurt, but you can also purchase a sort of  творог that is like drained cottage cheese curds. Both are quite tasty and excellent sources of protein. The yogurt-like one satisfies my desire for Greek yogurt, which I love but cannot get here. I like it plain, but it is also nice with a bit of fruit jam mixed in. My favorite way to eat the curd type is cut/crumbled a bit and spread on crackers. It is also the main ingredient in зепиканка (zepikanka), a Russian baked cheese cake that is often eaten with a drizzle (or dollop :) of sweetened condensed milk on top.

Now to сырок. (Here's a picture of one variety).

Pronounced seroke, it's main ingredient is actually cheese curds that are similar to or the same as the curd-type of творог. It has a lot of other stuff in it too, though, which makes it into a yummy desert that is best described as a portable cheesecake bar. The cheese curds are sweetened and often flavored, shaped into a rectangle, and then covered with a layer of chocolate. 

There are a lot of different flavors, brands, and varieties, which just makes life even more delicious. The prices also help make things über tasty; the general price range for a bar is from about 12 cents to a dollar, and, I can say from experience, the 12 cent ones are often just as good as the more expensive types. 

Voila- the сырок section!

Сырок can be vanilla, coconut, or chocolate flavored, covered in milk chocolate of dark chocolate, and even have a filling made from sweetened condensed milk in the middle. Yum. 

This type is delicious-flavored with the sweetened-condensed-milk-based filling in the middle. It's one if my favorites.

This one is chocolate-flavored with a dark chocolate coating. The flavor is called картошка, which means potato in Russian (and I promise that I'm not kidding). Despite it's odd name, I like this one best of all.

And now I'm really really hungry :)

Now that you're acquainted with творог and сырок (and perhaps also rather hungry, like me), I have some photos to share and some stories that go along with them. 

In our kitchen...

(Looking in from outside the door)

(From inside the kitchen)

...there is a table with a pot of sugar, a Tupperware filled with tea bags to make black tea, and a bowl that is always filled with some sort of snack. Sometimes it is сушки, pronounced sooshki (like sushi, but with a K), which look like miniature bagels, are the consistency of a hard pretzel, and taste like bread. Other times it is filled with a sort of Russian biscotti (smaller and less sweet than most biscottis that I've eaten, and often made with poppy seeds or chopped nuts baked into it).

After the bowl has been filled, people take and eat the goodies inside as they go about their business, and the bowl begins to empty at a relatively steady rate. Finally, it reaches the point where there's just one bread piece left in the bowl.

I'll see the bread, then come back later and find that the single piece of bread is still there.

I guess nobody wants to be the one to eat the last bread. I often am the one who finally goes ahead and eats it, but sometimes I just like to leave it there because I find it rather amusing to wait and see how long it takes before somebody else decides to end the poor bread's lonely misery. At some point, though, I'll come into the kitchen to make myself another cup of tea (I drink a lot of tea) and it'll finally be gone. 

***Side note: I actually took these last two pictures today. And I didn't fake the whole disappearance-of-the-last-piece-of-bread thing. I'm also not the one who ate it. I was in the kitchen several times this evening before I began writing this post, and during one of those trips was when I photographed the lone bread-piece. I just went back into the kitchen to find that, after sitting all alone since sometime this afternoon, it had finally disappeared while I was in my room writing my post. THIS IS NOT A LIE.***

The сушки and little biscotti/breads have saved me in many a hungry moment when too long had passed since my last grocery-shopping excursion and I was badly in need of a snack. Another thing that has saved me from similar circumstances is the bread stash in the cafeteria.

There is always at least one large pot sitting on a table in the cafeteria that is constantly filled with halved slices of rye bread (and the occasional random slice of standard white bread that happens to make it in). I call it the Bread Bucket.

Why? Because that is what it is. A bucket of bread. What could be better? (Besides a bucket of chocolate...).

Anyway, though the bread isn't the best in the world and is often a bit dry, I'm rather fond of the Bread Bucket. It's a good backup to have in case I'm hungry after a meal or between classes and don't have time to run back to my room. And it's really excellent when I just feel like I want to eat some bread.

In case one is unclear about the Bread Bucket's purpose, it has ХЛЕБ (pronounced hlep, means bread in Russian) painted on the side. I like that.

Now that I'm even hungrier than I was before, I'm going to finish this post and go find myself something tasty to eat!