Welcome!

Greetings to my fellow chefs, grillers, and cooks!  Since this is my first ever blog, and I have a lot of other electronic social media apps to catch up on, my first few blog posts will be simple and cover some basics necessary to cook like an American in Yekaterinburg.

First, I want to share a little about myself...
        
I was born and raised in the Midwest, near the large city of St. Louis.  Since this is not one of the biggest or most famous cities in America, I added a small map to show you where St. Louis is located.  Our area of the country is mostly known for agriculture (corn, wheat, & soybeans), barbeque (ribs, bratwurst, and chicken wings), great baseball, bad football, and a clean American accent! 

This is me:

(I am happy, not drunk...)

My family and I have lived in Yekaterinburg for about five years.  When we first arrived in 2008, we did not know how to speak Russian.  In fact, I had such a hard time pronouncing the name of the city, that I just called it "E-kat" for short.  As you can imagine, grocery shopping was quite a challenge!  The first set of vocabulary words I learned were mostly related to food.  Within a few weeks, I had a good idea of what I was buying.  But it took me another year before I could effectively cook without the "normal" pre-prepared, frozen, or instant food I was accustomed to in America. 
                                      
In the first two months of our time in Russia, I lost over 20 pounds (8 kg)!  How can culinary culture shock result in such a dramatic weight loss?  Simple - I am a picky eater, and few of our beloved short-cut foods were available in this city.  Nonetheless, we tried to cook our meals as if we were still in America, and the lack of pre-prepared options forced us to cook everything from scratch.  Dinner preparation went from 30-45 minutes in America to 1.5 - 2 hours in Russia! 

 

We continued to evolve our eating practices over the next year... our next phase was making more soup, just like our Russian friends.  But, as America has done over and over with other cultures, we tried to "American-ize" the concept of soup for dinner.  Although soup is often considered a main dish in Russia, it is generally regarded as a side dish in America.  So even though we cooked soup, which would last several days, our preparation time rarely decreased, because we were always making a sandwich or salad or something else to go with the soup... We could not accept that soup was a meal all by itself! 

The next step in our culinary adaptation was to begin eating more salads.  Although salads are a healthy alternative, they were met with much resistance from some of the children and myself.  On good days, our family was pretty evenly split about whether or not the salads were a good idea.  On bad days, we almost unanimously agreed that we needed to find another alternative.  Over a period of about a year, we ended up settling on a compromise of American dishes, soups, and salads that have gradually changed and evolved over the years.  And as a result, we generally eat more healthy in Russia than we ever did in America! 

In the months to come, I will introduce you to many of our favorite dishes.  As holidays come and go, I will make sure to offer you some of our more traditional foods as well as some of our more fun and interesting ones.  I will try to avoid any dishes that require ingredients imported from America.  After all, how can you try these wonderful recipes if you cannot find all the ingredients here in the city?! 

I encourage anyone who reads this blog to post your own experiences using my recipes.  Please feel free to offer thoughts, opinions, suggestions, etc.  I simply ask that you please be kind and constructive!  And most of all, I hope you enjoy the wonderful adventure of "cooking American" in Yekaterinburg!

Gary