YA KAPUSTA

Hello chaps,

Today’s blog is going to consist of some brief anekdoti about cabbage as I seem to have accumulated them of late. More specifically, the pickled, salted kind known as kapusta. I guess it’s the same thing as sauerkraut, which I’ve only had once, so I couldn’t tell you exactly.

Russians like pirozhki (see food blog). They like them filled with kapusta and egg, which, to an anglichanen (English person) sounds completely vile. It is.

Yesterday I tried kapusta for the first time. Anyone who knows me will know that I will eat literally anything, except offal and the fat on meat. And even offal I will eat if it means not offending a babushka – I had to do it in Kazan. I drank a LOT of water.

I do not spit food out, my mother taught me better than that.

I’m ashamed, but relieved to say that I spat out the fragment of kapusta. It is the second most vile thing I have ever put in my mouth. We don’t talk about the first.

 Luckily it was pinched off a friend who has somehow ended up with a kilo of the stuff. I don’t know what I would have done had I been in polite society. It probably would have been a napkin job.

Russia is cold and its language is full of idiomatic phrases. The thing I love about idioms is how much they reflect the culture of the language to which they are connected. My favourite at the moment is “Yolki Polki”, which means “fir trees and sticks!” and is said the same way that people in England may say “Holy Smoke!”. I love it because it’s so rural and Siberian sounding, a juicy cultural gem. It's also a restaurant that has a stuffed boar's head on the walls and fur for wallpaper. As you do.

Anyway, on a note related to cabbages and idioms: our teacher came out with a beauty today about people wearing lots of layers in the winter – “wrapped up like a kapusta!” (Russians eat a lot of cabbage, in case you missed the cultural reference here, I probably should have put more context into that one)

I enjoyed it. It seems a bit weak now out of context. Never mind!