Hungry? Time for lunch?
Borscht
Here are a few recipes for Borscht.
https://www.yummly.com/recipe/Russian-Borscht-Soup-2570751
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/russian-borscht/
Рецепт Борща
Landing Page
https://www.russianfood.com/recipes/bytype/?fid=12
Classic
https://www.russianfood.com/recipes/recipe.php?rid=56092
Beef - 500 g
Potatoes - 500 g
White cabbage - 500 g
Beetroot - 300 g
Carrots - 300 g
Onion - 2 pcs
Tomato paste - 2 tbsps
Prunes - 5 pcs
Parsley - 1 bunch
Salt - 0.5 - 1 tbsp (to taste)
Vegetable oil - 2 tbsps
Water - 2 litres
Sour cream (Сметана) (for serving) - to taste
'Usually beets are stewed in a skillet with lemon juice or vinegar...'
Beef Borscht
https://www.russianfood.com/recipes/recipe.php?rid=107392
Beef - 500 g
Beetroot - 1 pc
Potatoes - 2 pcs
White cabbage - 200 g
Carrot - 1 pc
Onion - 1 pc
Tomato paste - 1 tbsp
Vegetable oil-2 tbsps
Vinegar - 1 tsp
Bay leaf - 1 pc
Black pepper - 2 - 3 corns
Salt - 2 tsps (to taste)
Water - 1.5 litres
Dill and/or parsley greens (for serving) - 3 - 4 sprigs
Sour cream (Сметана) (for serving) - 2 tbsps
(We don't like the dill idea. Russians perhaps like it. You may too.)
Borscht with Chicken Broth
https://www.russianfood.com/recipes/recipe.php?rid=134380
Lifehacker (Лайфхакер)
https://lifehacker.ru/classic-borshcht/
A good friend on the Amalfi coast boasted about having the ultimate recipe which was based on cooking each ingredient separately. It took her no longer than she was able to make it from scratch for her daughter's one-hour school lunch-break. (We lost the recipe.)
EN subs available.
Note she's wearing a Lifehacker (Лайфхакер) T.
(It must be said, based on a single viewing by a polyglot, that it's amazing how many words in Russian are shared by other languages.)
Pronunciation
The word for it is 'борщ'. That implies 'щ' which is a double-consonant letter pronounced 'shch'. So the accepted spelling in the West is incorrect.
'Borscht can be eaten immediately after cooking. But, as a rule, the next day it tastes even better.'
Obviously. That holds for all foods of this kind.
Why?
Why borscht? This is why. Because, after seeing this Roundtable, Gonzalo's nineteenth, we felt a bit morose. Mind you, we've only had borscht once in our lives. We've targeted having it again but never pulled it off.
The one time we had it was in Helsinki years ago. It was rather good and, whatever this means, it didn't taste at all as expected - it tasted 'meatier', if that means anything.
What we've seen - we haven't dug deeper into this - Russian borscht can sometimes be yellow in colour, whereas the 'real' borscht, the 'original' one, is red. There's also some data indicating that the name itself comes from a slavic word for hogweed. And that it was only later that cabbage was substituted, and later still that beetroot was added.
Whatever! Why mention borscht? Or борщ? For this video, embedded below. For it seems inevitable that Russian culture will soon dominate our world. Whether we like it or not. And borscht as a lark is one thing, but as a permanent fixture in our lives, in our culture…
Why? Because, although three powers are emerging - China, India, and Russia - it'll be Russia that's the glue holding it all together.
We'll embed this clip now, and finish commenting on things below.
A bit about the participants. They're Gonzalo Lira, Andrei Martyanov, and Pepe Escobar. No pretty girls this time. None of their poetic words. But Gonzalo, Andrei, and Pepe make a formidable trio.
Gonzalo is from Chile. Holds dual citizenship with the US. Has an Ivy League degree. Became notorious for a series of podcasts he did for his son. Had since replanted himself to Ukraine where he seems to have built up a family. (His other family members have left the area. He stays behind because he wants to 'see what happens'.) He's in Kharkov which is still in Nazi control.
Andrei Martyanov is an internationally recognised military expert, formerly with the Russian armed forces, currently residing in Seattle. Known at times affectionately as 'Based Grandpa', he invariably begins his podcasts with 'well hello that's me again'.
Andrei - his Blogspot handle is 'SmoothieX12' - has no love or respect for the military talking heads on CNN and MSNBC. None whatsoever. And he has several books on the subject, most of which are available at Amazon, and all of which have met with universal acclaim.
Pepe Escobar is from Brazil and has become one of the world's foremost authorities on Far East affairs.
Pepe just got back from the EEF - the Eastern Economic Forum. Which dwarfs the G7 in influence and magnitude. The EEF represents about 90% of the people on the planet. At least 92% of those 90% support Russia in their current standoff with NATO and the US. How do you think things are going to turn out?
Pepe's been calling Paris his home now, but now says he's going back for only a week, and then he'll take wife and family back East with him. He's had it with the West.
Try one of those dinner parties in Paris, he says. You try to tell them what's really going on and they won't hear you. They really believe the comedian Zelensky has the upper hand. Try telling them anything factual and they just turn it off. I can't stand them any longer, he says.
Andrei stays with them for the first 90 minutes or so, then he's gotta run. Pepe stays behind to talk about recent developments in the West. Developments like Liz Truss.
Pepe has an extensive set of contacts in governments everywhere. He has the inside word on Truss, but also on everyone's number one love object Ursula von der Leyen. They don't come dumber than either of them, says Pepe. And it's hard to disagree.
Two Words
Two words. Or one, depending on who's saying it. Nord Stream. #2. The ultimate energy feed from Russia to Europe. Direct to Germany. Distribution from there. Great idea, the line's been completed for some time.
It's also the first line that didn't detour into the Ukraine so the pirates there could get a piece of the booty for no good reason. But the Dulles legacy in Washington didn't appreciate it much. So they reached halfway around the planet and...
The coming energy crisis in Europe: it's self-made. The EC could let Nord Stream 2 open, and no one would freeze this winter. They could also stop banging their heads into the wall with those sanctions which only make Russia richer. (Russia has never thrived like this before - they were doing well, but Ursula's EC really took things over the top.)
Russia's a self-supporting country. As you may have learned. They really don't need to import anything. Certainly not hamburgers either. Instead they're energy suppliers to the West - crucially to Europe. And all they want to do is settle things down in the Ukraine. The one thing the US does not want. As the US wants those berserk Nazis to keep annoying Russia so things never get too cosy with China. According to the 'Chessboard' doctrine laid down by Z-Big Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.
That book is still the Truman Building 101 course.
People and their welfare never enter into those geopolitical schemes. That's not a world that many of us choose to live in. We who no longer play with toy soldiers.
The world as we perceive it is going to look different when we no longer have an 'enemy' on the 'other side'. Russia's been the 'other side' for so long now. For our lifetimes. But that old world is gone and, in its place, is a new multipolar world. A world none of us can really understand or feel comfortable with, as we don't have it yet. But it's coming. Some are saying it's already here.
Here's Putin in Munich in 2007, giving what's universally acknowledged as one of the best speeches ever.
Honestly? We've never watched this clip all the way through. Read the transcript? Of course. But not the video clip. It's nice to see Lieberman, McCain, and Gates squirm in the front row. You can also see Mutti Merkel squirm.
This is when Dubya decided not to invite Vladimir back to Kennebunkport again. This is when Sharon Tennison started noticing a 'freeze' in the corridors in Washington where she'd been so welcome for over twenty years.
Putin didn't have the economic or military might to stand up to the US back then, but he felt he had to speak his mind, and he did. Now, fifteen years later, he has both the economic and military might. The US won't stop poking the bear, so OK. He's going in, and he did. And now, for a WWII ambition of megalomania, everything's going to crumble.
Remember, if things get really really bad where we are: it didn't have to be like this. Get rid of the Nazis? Yes. Nuremberg should have taken care of them back in 1945. As you will see in the above Roundtable clip, Pepe and Gonzalo predict a 'rump state' for Poland with all the nutters in the same place, a sort of buffer, and the rest of Ukraine back with Russia.
Some people are going to be OK. Thanks to people like Josep Borrell and Ursula von det Leyen, Russians are doing better than ever in their thousand-year history. Eva Bartlett's fine. Rachel Blevins is fine. They're from Canada and Texas respectively. And now they're based in cold cold Moscow and loving it. And good old Edward Snowden's raising a family there. He'd not be welcome in the US, only to a prison cell.
Russia's doing fine, China's doing OK, India's coming on strong. So are countries in the Global South. It's prohibitively difficult to get a residence visa in Russia, and it's cold there in the winter, although Siberia is hot hot hot in the summer. Visas to Russia are really hard to get. And, again, it's just too cold. But the idea of some cottage, out in the middle of nowhere, where we're visited every morning by a babushka who has freshly baked 'хлеб'... The thought is tempting. Their keyboards must be impossible. Like on Crete. Perhaps the babushka can make the борщ...
Stay warm and safe.
'Just remember: breeding is no substitute for intelligence, often the death of it.' - Dr Robert Campbell