*I started this post two weeks ago, and it's been languishing as a draft since then. Since then, I've learned I was also tagged at about the same time by Wally Shedd, the Accidental Russophile.
Four jobs I've had (though none of these was within the past 9 years):
Waiter
Standardized test essay grader (sometimes those 8th graders had really depressing things to say)
Housepainter
Recycler of newspapers (including driving a 20-foot, 5-ton truck full of them - favorite job ever. That was a summer job; I also worked for these folks during the school year.)
Four movies I can watch over and over:
Leaving Las Vegas
Burnt by the Sun
Ironiia Sud'by
Can't think of anything else - I've never been a very discerning big-screen viewer.
Four places I've lived:
Lagos, Nigeria
Leningrad, the USSR
Washington, DC (the District, none of this suburban nonsense)
Moscow
North Cambridge, Massachusetts
Four TV shows I like:
X-Files (not the last few seasons)
Namedni (R. I. P.)
Law & Order (preferably the original)
Simpsons
Four places I've vacationed:
Uzbekistan (made it to Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as the gateway city of Tashkent, although not to Khiva or the Aral Sea)
Shanghai, PRC
Moldova (I've been to just about every big city in the country - Chisinau, Balti, Soroca, Comrat, Ungheni, and others - even made it to Tiraspol twice)
Kenya (a week on safari and a week on the beach in Mombasa - something like 20 years ago)
Four of my favorite dishes:
Blini from Teremok
Starbucks Eggs Florentine sandwich (favorite food of the moment) / Starlite Diner Eggs Benedict
Hammered pork cutlets and yellow string beans with garlic
Anything my mom makes
Four sites I visit daily (there is actually no such site, but these are the ones I visit most frequently):
Neeka's Backlog
Slate.com
Lenta.ru
My counter logs
Four books I've read this year (or, to be precise, within the past year):
Acts of Faith (highly recommended)
Lying Together: My Russian Affair (don't draw any conclusions)
Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams (it didn't really work)
The Man Who Tried to Save the World : The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of an American Hero (interesting if you're interested in Chechnya)
Four bloggers I'm tagging:
Nobody. I don't want to lay this burden on anyone else.
4 comments:
Just out of curiosity, how would you describe a Teremok blin in comparison to its Stateside analogues?
(I've never had a chance to eat blini that anyone would describe as authentic.)
i can't stay away from Teremok. It just may be my single largest expense after rent!
I can't think of a good comparison in the States. They are sort of like crepes, except at the outside Teremok locations they are packaged so that you can eat them with your hands. They are not like the blintzes you can get in the US in your grocer's freezer section (you can get those in Russia, too, frozen or from the deli section, but they're generally called "blinchiki" - little blini).
They are damn tasty.
I'll second the vote for the Teremok blini - and unless you are making crepes at home there really isn't anything I've found comparable here. IHOP crepes or blintzes aren't the same. We used to be able to get crepes at carnival stands during Oktoberfest when I lived in Germany, but the Teremok variety are much bigger. I was rather surprised with how inexpensive and generous they are.
I'm not sure about Teremok's recipe, but Natasha makes her blini with the whey that is left over from making tvorog. I think that is a more traditional way to make them, at least within the home.
By the way, I'm quite impressed with Burnt by the Sun also - I hadn't seen it before I purchased the DVD about a month ago. I've watched it 3 times since then and find something else in it each time. The ending comes rather heavy, even knowing what was coming the first viewing was a bit of a shock.
I hadn't realized you were around Cambridge in the past - practically in my backyard. I have work going on around Boston all the time.
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