Cream puffs, caviar and the cool kids' table

I keep forgetting to take my camera with me on weekend outings, so no new photos to share. I really wanted some of the Russian Fashion Week event our friend Denis invited us to a show of Olga Romina’s designs. I actually really liked some of her designs…skirts with billowing extra fabric and large, deep pockets so you can imagine walking down the streets in September with your hands in your pockets and think, “Yeah, this is me walking in my poofy skirt that feels like a mini-toga and a soft breeze is blowing around my panties and I feel fine.” And, to my delight, all of her models wore Chuck Taylors in varying colors and heights. Just an hour earlier I had been arguing with Jason that Chuck Taylor’s never go out of style. Obviously, I win.

My favorite moment in the show happened when one of the models walked out in a pair of hi-top white Chucks and a dress that closely resembled a cream puff. I couldn’t even find arm holes. On cue, a blond woman in “hip lady” glasses ooohed and clapped silently for the cream puff, obviously approving of the dress, despite the fact that it does not enable the wearer to go the bathroom, fit through doors or avoid being compared to pastry. Jason and I discussed said dress afterwards. He liked it, thought it was cool-looking, and you know, pushing the boundaries of “wearable” and traditional modes of clothing, blah blah blah. I agree with him, really…I actually liked the design with the brown hullahoop covered in flopping brown leaf-things that the designer intended these poor women to sling over their shoulder as part of the ensemble. But cream puff? My parents made me a pumpkin costume when I was four that looks strikingly similar to that design, but at least I could hold my fucking candy bucket.

I have a student in my English class, Natalie, who likes good music, so we’ve been trading music. I should say, I tried…I gave a list of my favorite bands that Relatively Few People know about, but she had heard them all. So, again, I’m the one getting the recommendations. A long while back I realized that I would always be the indie fan who had just heard the great new album or movie that everyone had seen and listened to, like, two days ago. It’s was like that in Chicago…between Joel Reamer and Cripe and Jake Mohan, I couldn’t keep up. Never will either. Am I OK with that? More or less. Some days I want to be sitting at the cool kids table though, I’ll admit it.

But then, I'll always have eggplant caviar.

EGGPLANT CAVIAR

Ingredients:
One large or two small eggplants (Japanese purple are best, but more expensive)
One can crushed tomatoes, plain
Three cloves garlic, finely diced (don’t use that silly shit in a jar either)
One small red onion, finely diced
Tomato paste
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Fresh cilantro

Peel the eggplant. Dice into small pieces, about the size of the end of your pointer finger. Then stick on a plate, and salt heavily. I mean heavy. Don’t worry about the saltiness; it will be washed off. Let sit for 30 min-hour. The eggplant will now begin oozing brown water, and this is a good thing. Slice up the rest of the veggies while you wait, then put the eggplant pieces in a strainer and rinse, then squeeze the excess water out. This is important! If your eggplant is stuffed up with extra water, or isn’t soft enough, you will get hard and chewy eggplant, and that crap will give you gas. So squeeze, love the eggplant. Now, heat up about 4 tablespoons of olive oil at medium in a medium sauce pan (that’s the one you make ramen in). You can add more oil if you’re feeling crazy - I almost always do. Once the oil is hot (it will sizzle drops of water), add onion. Cook till the onion is translucent, then toss in the garlic and eggplant, turn the heat to low. Now, don’t touch! Leave uncovered and alone for 5-10 minutes, till the eggplant looks brownish and smooshy. Then add one tablespoon of tomato paste and a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, and turn up heat. In five minutes add tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste till tomatoes are mushy and the whole mess looks like sloppy goo. Finely chop about 3 tablespoons of fresh cilantro (never use dried), add to caviar, and serve warm with toast, grilled pita bread, or crackers. This goes lovely with cheese, and I add a bit of crushed red pepper cause I like it hot, baby.

Zaliningrad

This weekend, Jason and I ventured with Liz to Zaliningrad, a large town which is supposed to be part of Moscow incorporated, but its a suburb by North American standards. We took the night train from Moscow to hit the local club scene. The club we went to was relatively unextraordinary...expensive MGD bottles, comfy couches and a hooka room off to the side (first time for me, it was pretty tasty). It was 70 and 80s night, which while it meant a bunch of Soviet disco standards with whom I admit, sadly, I am unfamiliar, but the DJ did play the "Ghostbuster's" theme. That song has the capacity to make people move, no matter what side of the pond you're from.

But the interesting part of the trip was the town itself. Zaliningrad was designed and constructed to house all the computer nerds and their families as the trade emerged in late 70s or so (I estimate). It doesn't have the broken-down kiosks and slick slots clubs everywhere...the stores weren't swanky, just strikingly middle-class. For a country that supposedly doesn't have that Ikea-shopping bulge in the middle of its income spread, Zaliningrad was a real sight. The bus we rode on was shiny-new, with automated turnstiles...the park we crossed to get to Pizza Pronto was meticulously kept with thick cobblestones and convenient rain-protected benches. The grade school and high school, built right next to each other, looked like Cosmonaut versions of 1980s SoCal schools...and the grade school was an orange-and-white MiniMe version of the impressive blue-and-white high school.

The neighborhoods lack trees, so 17-story pale but newish apartment buildings shoot of the ground like fence posts. Intimidatingly dense forest surrounds the whole town...the birch tree and evergreen Russian-style forest. This kind of forest doesn't have the slopy roundness to the treetops that you see in the Midwest, and they remain the same muted green the whole year. It's dark, foreboding, and after 3 months in Moscow, one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in a while. And the air...lawrd, the air was clear and almost sweet. Jason and I kept reminding each other, "Do it again, do it again...breathe, ahhhh". It's been raining, so Moscow air is like sniffing a wet ashtray. Our friend James thought Zaliningrad was as dinged and flashy as Moscow, but I thought it was lovely. I wondered guiltily if it was because a Whole Foods store might look more at place in Zaliningrad...that my suburban sensibilities drew me to the white-and-gray Tinker-Town. But it made me wonder if this feeling was what young families in the US thought in the 1950s...not that their new McSuburbs were impersonal, or gawdy, or oppressive...but rather pretty.

Living in Moscow, with water-logged gray quickly becoming the season's hottest color around here, and the late fall rains washing countless streams of tar, dirt and trash down the sidewalks, I imagine the charms of a pre-made, sparkly white suburb. No crowded metro wagons, fewer aging drunks sleeping on steam grates, fewer buildings draped in construction tarp. Zaliningrad didn't have a McDonald's every two feet, or miles of strip malls, or streets clogged with traffic and construction. It doesn't have the noise, the oppressive go, go. Just busy families wandering into shops and bustops under the giant white apartment buildings stretching up towards the clear gray sky. Russia's grand version of the white picket fence.

Someone pays me for this, seriously

I have come to a realization. Teaching English to foreigners isn't hard, as long as they already speak English. Since you, the American, are an expert in English-speaking, (approximately 24 years of experience, as I noted in my resume) all you have to do, is correct them when it sounds a bit off-kilter:
"I am stressed when mother makes of me eat only carrot for the dinner because she reveals that I am too fat."
Easy, right? I can sit on my desk (you know, I'm a "casual" kind of teacher) and grin and correct them with easy confidence and even compassion. My wonderful students are eager to learn to speak English better because they realize, and admit freely, that English is slowly dominating communication across the globe and no one wants to be a loser in the game of globalization.

Last night, however, I taught a "Beginners" class. They too, want to take part in the global dominance of the English language, but barely know the alphabet. I have to admit that I am, in all honesty, somewhat higher than a beginner in Russian, but not quite intermediate. Like the kid in class that the teacher apologizes for and whispers, "Oh, and that's Joe...she's a little slow." My students only understand "Nice to meet you", and "That is a beautiful park" and "Look at my BMW" (I did, and both of them were very nice cars, I have to admit). So giving an English lesson to them meant that I should both speak Russian and know English really, really well. Well enough to explain the difference between a, some and any. And singular. And fucking busy. I attempted a charades version of "busy". They guessed "ill".

Student: (long question in Russian, I hear nothing until, "Understand?")
Me: Um, nyet. (No)
Student: (throws hands in air, laughing, long statement in Russian)
Me: Ok, super. (Look at board, look at book, look at watch). So, read this sentence please...

In the end, I was taught how to say busy, sentence, and river in Russian, and I think my students learned the word, "mountains." Very productive. At one point, I even had to ask them to cross out a part of the notes I told them to write down, because it was wrong. Just wrong.

Uh, кашмар. The only solice was that the two students thought I was at least funny enough that I should come back. He yelled to me as Jason and I were leaving:

"Hey, you should come back anytime. We will teach each other!"
He grinned, and then yelled to Jason, "She doesn't understand. Make sure to tell her what I said!"