Bodybags in the Bathtub and other fun Thanksgiving Stories

I'll post Thanksgiving pictures when I get off my butt and get Jason to upload them onto Flickr. Creating my own blog template is as far as I've gone to control my technological world. Pathetic, yes. I've been frustrated to tears over switching the TV from PlayStation to DVD mode. I can barely operate my digital camera, and I certainly can't do something useful like design a website or organize a database. I am aware that this makes me a less-attractive job candidate (which I will officially be in February), so I will do what I have always done...stretch what lousy skills I do possess (Excel bar charts...done and done!) into a seemingly-desireable package. I wonder if put "information capacity building" experience to mean knowing how to use Google?

So, Thanksgiving went well...as well as can be expected in a country that doesn't sell cream of mushroom soup or jellied cranberry sauce in a can. The turkeys were a little dry but had a rich flavor (I don't think these we're Butterball live-in-a-box turkeys...these we're muscular, old gamey birds). One of the turkeys got the boot for being skinny and sketchy-looking...I'm thinking this bird was a sickly-sort before it hit the chopping block. But cooking the turkeys involved two days of soaking in the bathtub, being brined in black plastic body bags, and taking turns in our pint-sized oven. They were a beautiful golden brown though...but all the work...I don't know, the Kosher chicken I made took 10 minutes, tasted like a dream, and created it's own rich, garlicy sauce. My mashed potatoes (made from starchy Neejzny Novogorad potatoes) were thick and dough-like, despite Jason's muscle-intense efforts to improve them. Margo of Grinnell '05 swept in with her own delicious mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (!), and the rest of my dishes turned out well, especially the stuffing, thanks to bundles of fresh thyme and sage smuggled in from London by a friend of mine.

I wish I could say I loved the chaos of the day, with groups of people piling in around 6 o'clock with arms of champagne and wine, but I was too busy stirring and chopping and checking to enjoy the early evening festivities. And after a while, I didn't care...I ate and drank and ran around with Liz, playing cards. I missed my family though. Thanksgiving hasn't always been a bright spot in the Sloger family collective memory. I'm thinking of one year when my dad and stepmom were fighting, my mom and brothers working, so we called the holiday off. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it's rough to swallow...I'm enough of an turkey-hugging tradionalist to feel like calling the day off over family rows does NOT put the "fun" in dysfunctional. Dad and I celebrated the night in a Clinton county bar crawl that satisfyed my craving for Dad-time, but did little to soothe the pang of the day as we drank Bud Lights served by grizly but empathetic barmaids under cheap twinkling Christmas lights, surrounded by the other sappy drunks playing Hank Williams and Alabama Christmas covers.

I've gotten more into Thanksgiving and Christmas the last few years (Easter is still and will be forever a crap Hallmark holiday after the New Kids On the Block incident of Easter '91). I don't think all of my family shares the sentiment, but I get all misty-eyed and sentimental when all of three of us kids (my brothers being stout and working guys of 20 and 22) get together and drink Dad and Jamie's beer and listen to Frank Sinatra and make fun of our parents and each other. If we didn't have the ability to tease each other to tears and blows, I don't know how we would have resurrected these holidays from the bowels of divorce and teenage disenchantment. Honestly, I think it helps that I have skipped town, and the only chance my brothers have to call me "whore" and "dumb b**ch" are on these precious nights. I know, I know, these are "bad words" and if Jason ever called me these names in earnest I would threatened him with an involuntary lobotomy. But this is part of the unspoken code of affection my brothers and I have for each other. I may have gone off to private college and live in Russia, but to them, I'll always be their air-headed sister. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it goes better with turkey than absinthe shooters and punching your face through a wall.

Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was merry and belt-busting. Tonight: Israeli hip-hop group called Dog Snake, or Snake Dog, or some other variation on that theme.

Coming soon...Me vs. Turkey and Kosher Chicken

Tonight begins a 48-hour perilous trial. A journey of unforeseen horrors, of untold glories. I am making a Thanksgiving dinner (with Kosher accents) for 20+ people. In a Russian one-rack square-shaped oven and a four-point electric range. Lordy, have mercy on me.

A photo-tale of my journey will follow soon, with recipes. To all of you, Happy Thanksgiving, hope you are surrounded by warmth, family, and nostalgia (childhood should always feel a little better in hindsight) and eat some cranberry sauce for me, cause they don't sell the stuff out here.

Whatever you do, don't start a fire in Moscow

Jason and I got to have a brief encounter with some of the Moscow Fire Department last night. At about 1:30 in the morning we hear the door buzz, then banging. We throw some clothes on and answer the door, where some firefighters are standing in the hallway. They are young (like 18-20), and a couple of them are giggling like mad. I say giggling, cause I can't think of a better word, but its a sort of silly laughing you do when you've drank too many malt beverages. We assure the men that the fire isn't in our apartment, so they buzz the apartment next door. We close the door, but watch through the peephole (what a glorious invention). No answer. The firefighters attempt to kick the door in. They must not think it's that serious, because no one swings their pickaxe at the flimsy wood door, but give it a few solid kicks. Voices yell out from inside. No fire in here. They still won't open the door. A couple of the fireguys are now sitting in the hallway, laughing, but apparently the supervisor, a bit older, thinks this is fishy.

He takes off his oxygen tank, lights a cigarette, and kicks the door again. He asks the question again, was there, at any time, a fire in this apartment. Oh right, the voice say, there was a fire. In a frying pan. It's fine now. The people never come out of the apartment, and I think the woman may have lied about being alone (there was a man in there too). Totally sketchy. What could they have been doing in there? I don't think crystal meth is very popular here, so I ruled out that. Stolen merchandise? Hiding illegal immigrants? Illegal glass-blowing? I have to mention that this is a nice new apartment building. But it is curious. Makes me wonder what is so mysterious and worth hiding that you wouldn't open the door for firemen. Or maybe they were dressed up funny, like German school girls. Who knows, though the best part was definitely Captain Fireguy lighting a cigarette while attempting to investigate a fire. Yes, sir, now is definitely the time for a Malboro Light.

The trip to Krasnodar was great, and filling. Jason's host mom insisted that we eat, and eat, and keep eating...and of course, all of it was god, filling starchy foods your grandmother favors. They were entirely lovely people though, and my true saving grace. I needed to be around warm sweet people for a weekend. And walking around streets that weren't covered in construction and towering gray buildings. Krasnodar had trees, and paths, and sweet and dirty-smelling wind. It was lovely. The 26-hour-train ride down, was cool for the first three hours, then lost its novel charm. Being stuck in small, cramped spaces just makes you want to sleep and perhaps read. Not very romantic, indeed.

This is called lunch in Jason's host mom's house. Other people call this a crap ton of fun.

Jason and Lisa walking down the main drag in Krasnodar. We are currently searching for the tofu store. This magical little place had blocks of fresh tofu, which is called "Cheese-tofu" here. Lisa had brought us stick-on fake mustaches from the US, so we sat around a couple of night, drinking wine, wearing mustaches, and taking turns reading from the sixth Harry Potter book.


Babooshka, or grandma, sipping tea after lunch. She couldn't pronouce "Courtney" (Russian girls names always have "a" or "ya" at the end... an "ee" ending sound very strange to them), so she just called me "Helper" or "Young Lady". My Russian students thought this was hilarious, though for the record, I can't remember any of them using my name either. Ah well, "you" works in any language.

Me speaks the good English, yes...

If you heard the following phrase, where do you think it came from:
"How would you send it somebody through the email?"

A) Circa-1950's Alien-Moves-Next-Door-and-Eats-Babies flic
B) Your friendly neighborhood Hungarian wine-guzzler, while using the CD-drive as a cupholder
C) Brendan Frazer in "Encino Man"
D) None of the above

D. None of the above. I said it, sober, at work, while trying to send an mp3 file. And you wonder why it's difficult for me to improve my Russian.