Our Russian Evening

No photos this week - I was just too busy. Last night we had lots of wonderful friends and family over for our "Russian Evening". Generally it went very well, but I have to confess something that let me hang my head in shame...! But let me start at the beginning!

I had planned to welcome everyone with bread and salt as we had been welcomed on board our ship. Unfortunately my fridge was very full, so the (bought) bread dough was left outside and by the time I wanted to bake it, it had fallen flat! So no Russian bread welcome! (I baked the bread dough this morning and actually it was fine! Too bad I hadn't done it yesterday! I could have treated my guests to wonderful warm bread and let them experience "Russian" hospitality!)

I never got round to making the herring and salmon snacks I had envisioned, so the guests had to make their own snacks while I was still running around. I hope everyone got something. I'm not the best hostess - if you don't help yourself, you'll go without something to drink.We are fortunate to have two houses on the farm: my mother's house and our house. We arranged the furniture in the top house in rows for the slide show. Thelwyn had organised a computer projector for us - thank you Thelwyn! It was fun to relive our Russian tour and to see our new friends Gert and Maria again. Thanks for the video and the DVD and the picture and...and!

After the show, we had Russian food, or at least my version of it. I had made

• Chicken - my own recipe. I think it was something like what we got served on the ship.
• Vareniki (filled dumplings) I probably will never make it again. Not bad, but too much work and I do not think really worth the effort. But more than half of the dish got eaten up, so either our guests were just polite, or they actually liked it. (When I had made a trial batch, Hendrik did not think I should include it in the menu, but since it forms a part of Russian New Year celebrations, I included it anyway!)
• Bitochki: meatballs with mushroom and sourcream sauce. I seldom use sour cream - too expensive and too many calories - so the sauce was too thick and I had to thin it down with plain yoghurt. I'm not wild about meatballs, but these were quite good. I'll just make the sauce with plain yoghurt next time.
  
• Kidney bean salad with rye bread, grated apple, olives, cheese and mayonnaise. This is one of my favourite Russian recipes, but there was a lot left over. On the other hand, I did not really see any left on the plates... but on the other I did not scrape the plates either, so I do not really know whether the guests liked it, but this is a recipe I'll make again - if only for myself!
  
• Carrot salad. I did not make it with sour cream as my Russian recipe suggested, but I did put in the chopped dried apricots and it was popular.
• Beetroot: I cheated and used box beetroot, but I drained the beats and added walnuts, raisins and mayonnaise- as the recipe stated. This dish was very popular and I definitely will make it again.
  
• Cucumber salad with hardboiled egg and sour cream dip. This salad was far more popular than Thelwyn (she made it for me) had thought it would be and we should have made more.
• Russian picnic potatoes: a stirfried mixture of parboiled potato strips (chips) and mushroom and onion. Since our Russian tour I have made it a few times and will continue to make it. If you come to visit, you are likely to get it! I can recommend it.
• Poppyseed rolls, strawberries and icecream for dessert. This is another "recipe" I can really recommend. We had something like this on the ship and this is my version: you unroll a room temperature roll of flaky pastry. (NB. it takes a long time to defrost, so take it out of the freezer, the day before.) Spread it with a good quality chocolate spread. (The cheapest variety turned out to be like chocolate sauce and did not work too well when I had tried it before.) Sprinkle poppy seeds on top of the chocolate and roll up the pastry again. Pinch the edge to make sure it doesn't unroll while baking. Cut in slices and bake for about 20 minutes - but watch it. I made this for earlier this week when my sister Anne 'crashed' with us for the night and it burned!! What a pity. Anne thought it might have been the oven pan, so for the party I made sure I used a ceramic dish.
  

Of course we had to end the meal with КОФЕ and ЧАЙ. We had an urn, mugs, various coffees, tea, sugar and milk set out and invited everyone to help themselves... I was busy chatting, and covering left overs - I couldn't let do over zealous guests do that on their own - so I never made myself coffee. Anyway I only drink hot water, so I doubt that I would have noticed that something was amiss. When guests started to say good-bye, I said, "But you haven't had coffee yet." And they all assured me that they had already had coffee thank you....! No one told us that actually the coffee was undrinkable! It was only after everyone had left, that we realised that the milk was sour... not just sour, nearly thick! (Whoever put that bottle in the fridge?) Jan had put the fresh milk in the fridge in the other house, because ours was too full....

So to anyone reading this: thank you for coming. It was a memorable way for us to end our tour of all tours. But next time, please tell me if something is amiss! (Sour milk is not likely to happen again: I'll make sure I'll taste it from now on!!)

Без перевода. (Goodbye)