brilliant or ridiculous things

I just finished that Siberia piece that I did not send my mother. He (Ian Frazier) captures an element of Russian culture brilliantly:

"Dinner has ended long ago, but we are sitting at the table, drinking our fifth or seventh cup of tea; and I am thinking that Russians can sit at a supper table while saying brilliant or ridiculous things longer than seems physically possible; further, this trait may explain Russia's famous susceptibility to unhealthy foreign ideas, with post-mealtime tea-drinking providing the opportunity for contagion; and further yet, I am wondering whether tea perhaps has been a more dangerous beverage to the Russian peace of mind, overall, than vodka."

I don't recall whether or not I've made my Russia notes available on this blog. I do know that I've lost the earlier set--those from the 1999 trip--even though I still have the notebook in which I took the actual notes. But it was during the 2004 trip that I managed to escape a night of eating and drinking to accompany a friend of my mom's for a midnight bike ride across St. Petersburg. My mother made her friend call her once an hour, and she barely agreed for me to go at all. By the way, it does not get dark in late May/early June in St. Petersburg, so it's not like lighting was a factor. In fact, it was a great way to see so much of the city in one white night. But I digress. My point is, my parents and their friends can sit around a table for ages.

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Was it last week, the anniversary of the Kitchen Debate? It's curious that the kitchen part derives from a competition in appliances, technology. Look at all this stuff that makes cooking easier. To the point where we no longer have to cook at all. Check out Michael Pollan's Defense of Cooking. They sell pre-processed, frozen PB&J? WTF?

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I came upon a crossword clue recently that was "Russian dish served with sour cream." I thought, "everything?" There really is little on which Russians don't heap sour cream. This becomes an issue every time I'm at my parents' house; they insist that whatever I'm eating just isn't the same without sour cream. Gag me.

By the way, the answer was "blini." But it was a stupid clue, as discussed above, and it's a stupid answer, too, since "blini" is ungrammatical in English. The terminal "i" denotes the plural. If Russians were to Russianize the word "pancakes," they'd probably say "pancake-i" rather than "pancakes." It follows that it would sound that much better for English speakers to say "blins."