Borscht

Now, I’m nobody’s food chef or connoisseur. I’m usually an “eat the beans straight from the can” kind of guy. Only when I’m absolutely popping with ingenuity, will I mix an egg into my ramen and pat myself on the back for being a culinary genius. Bon appétit.

Not to say that I’m disinterested in food or other cultures, quite the contrary. I’m actually quite appalled at how xenophobic most Americans are. And the first time I ate at a real taco truck (You know, the one with a rooster painted on the side?) I immediately went to Taco Bell and threw a brick through the window for having been lied to my entire life. It’s the same with the Louisiana hot sauce, or tabasco. Fool’s gold! And the quality of the taco truck parked outside the gas station forever changed my outlook and my life.

Once when I was in Mexico, there was a guy everybody called “Chuleta”, (Spanish for "Pork Chop") who had a sushi restaurant, and once a group of us went to his house outside of town, where he had a tree in his yard. Pork Chop asked me if I’d ever heard of a Chile Manzano. I had not. If you haven’t heard, it’s a pepper about the size of a bell pepper and has an orangish yellowish color, I think in English they call it a Rocoto. I asked if it was hot, and somebody suggested; “Why don’t you try it and find out?” Sure, why not? I knew it would be hot, and finding out later that it is related to the habanero, this was a cruel understatement. But upon biting into it, and with all these guys shitting themselves with anticipation, there was also no turning back.

One time I bought some habanero hot sauce. I got one from the Texas store at the mall. It came in a wooden box with caution tape around it. Sweet! At the time, it was the hottest thing I’d ever tasted at 350,000 Scoville. I got some on my finger during lunch at school, and thirty minutes after washing my hands, I forgot about it, and casually wiped my eye. Oops. I spent the last part of the day in the nurse’s office dumping saline solution in my eye, and dictating my last will and testament. Now, at Chuleta’s house eating this pepper like it was some bad-ass apple, I had snot and sweat streaming down my beet red face, my stomach gurgling like swamp thing was about to breach the surface, and my asshole threatening to spew forth the molten fires of Mordor. But I couldn’t quit. I had to prove that this gringo could hack it. And when someone suggested we go to the tacos, I said; “Let's go!” In between desperate gasps for air. Whereupon I cut up the rest of it over my tacos, and then topped them off with some more salsa. Nowadays at me, that weak-ass tabasco is what I use for eye drops. I can’t wait to try one of these 1,000,000 Scoville gummy bears, or the one Paqui chip challenge. Kid's stuff...I think.

So, expanding personal limits and challenging preconceived notions is what I love about exploring new cultures. In part, I guess because it wasn’t exactly encouraged growing up? Some sort of rebellion? I don’t know, but for comparison, about the only kind of experiences I had growing up that were extra Americana, were the occasional trips to El Chico at the end of the street, where mother would complain that the ketchup was too hot. And being warned not to play with the “dirty Mexicans” next door. True stories. I remember asking, but they were never able to explain the difference between a Russia, and a Soviet Union. Nor were they able to explain why those entities were “bad”, or why they were the enemy. They just were.

“Haven’t you ever seen Rocky IV? Look at him, he’s evil!”

Both parents grew up in the south during the cold war; my step dad was from Mississippi and Mother was from rural east Texas. Do I need to tell you their stances on fire-hosing protesters? Or how many times I heard conversations about the when and how "the south would rise again”? I'll just say it's no surprise they could barely find Russia on a globe. I don't respect willful ignorance, but I neither do I villainize someone for being a product of their environment they were born into.

In the "Times They Are A-Changin'" liner notes from 1964, Bob Dylan wrote the following;

"A Russian has three an' a half red eyes / five flamin' antennas / drags a beet-colored ball an' chain / an' wants t' slip germs / into my Coke machine"

There's always got to be a bad guy. By the time I came around the Iraqis had been added to the pantheon of American Boogey mens.

However, in the 10th grade, my horizons opened drastically and irreversibly. I had to take a cheesy little Spanish class; ¿Dónde está el mercado de frutas? (Where is the fruit market?) and I guess I got the bug. The class wasn’t anything special, but it piqued my interest in foreign language and culture. An interest I had only ever been able to explore through hours of poring over the family’s encyclopedias. But now, it was fascinating be able to say ‘mango’ in now another language … (it’s Mango) The whole world opened up before me.

So, years later, after coming back from Mexico, eyes still watering from Chuleta’s bad-ass apple, I was bored one day and casually pulled the idea of learning Russian out of thin air. I have no political affiliations, and with a very tenuous understanding of Russian culture and history, (the boogey man in all the movies), I decided to find out for myself. After all, the written language looked pretty far out, with all sorts of backwards letters and traffic jams of consonants. I said; “Let’s find out for ourselves.”

Language and culture being inextricably linked is one of the things I find so fascinating about it. You wouldn’t have one without the other, and as iron sharpens iron, when you cross those cultural and linguistic barriers you gain new perspectives and even a broadened palate... I mean, I'm usually not going to cook it, but I'll pay top dollar for the experience.

For example, had I not developed an interest in cultures and languages, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that a burger you get at McDonald’s in Germany, tastes very different from a burger you get in America. The same could be said for the corn in Mexico. You come back to the states, and you can just taste the growth hormones.

“Mm, gibberellin(GA), abscisic acid (ABA), how I missed you. Murica!!”

And so, after a while of studying the Russian language, I began to learn about the Russian cuisine as well. Now, this next part is a plug, but I don’t care. If you’re ever in Arlington Texas, there’s a place called ‘Taste of Europe’ there on Pioneer Parkway, it’s owned by a man from Belarus (affectionately known as ‘The Last Dictatorship in Europe’), who came over here during the cold war. Г-н михаил, or Mr. Mikhail as I call him, came here not knowing the language and has since built his restaurant and had it featured on that show by that one Back Street Boys reject, what’s his name? Guy Fierro? You know Mr. Frosty tips. I just thought this soft spoken old man always had an amazing story; coming here and embodying the American dream, that most of us natives take for granted, and have long since allowed to die. I remember the first time I went there though, there were no hot chilies, and no tortillas. Looking around feeling that something was missing, I nearly panicked, saying; "I don't trust these people!"

Now, I don’t know if I need to tell you that none of this was encouraged by mother or anyone she associated with. But do I have to tell you that I don't care?

Fast forward a few years, and I was in the collemege for American Sign Language interpretation, and twice a semester we would have ‘food day’ to drive home the point that you can indeed sign language and eat food at the same time. Spoilers, you can. Everyone was to participate and bring something. My teacher DB, was asking what day we all wanted to do it, and my schedule didn’t want me to do it on a Monday.

Side note: being the only cock in a veritable hen-house of female students, is a unique cultural experience unto itself. And though I wouldn’t boast to have mastered all the nuances of any estro-centric environment, I have gotten pretty good at looking sideways at a female and scornfully cawing; “Betch.”

The vote was between Monday and Wednesday, to which I voted vehemently for the latter, but my single vote was overridden by the whole class room of dopey betches. Well shit! DB asked me what I was going to bring, to which I said; “If I have to do it on a day that doesn't fit my schedule, then I’m bringing Borscht, and these girls can eat it.”

Someone was bringing nachos, somebody else was bringing cake. Noticing the henhouse murmuring in confusion and hostility, DB asked if Borscht went well with nachos.

“About as good as nachos go with cake.” I reckoned.

So she put me down on the list as bring Borscht. Now what have I got myself into? I don’t know anything about cooking, and all of a sudden I’ve signed myself up to deliver on some complex-ass recipe I only chose to spite this dopey gaggle of broads. Good job dipshit.

Another plug; I have an app on my phone called HelloTalk, it’s great for connecting people to learn each other’s target languages. They used to claim to not be a dating site, but I think now they’ve realized they make more money by not fighting it. Anyway, I had a friend who I'll call Anastasia, who lived in Moscow. We were language partners for a while, and I'd tell you I wasn’t in love with her, but if I did that, I’d be a big fat liar.

So all I knew about borscht, was that it has beets in it, so I called Nastya for help. She came through with an old family recipe. I got all the ingredients together, even making a trip to 'Taste of Europe', and sampled some of Mr. Mikhail’s homemade borscht for comparison, and buying a couple of imported Russian ingredients. Nowadays, looking over the recipe is not that intimidating, but at the time, it felt like reading the Vietnam memorial on a time budget, and uh, you're not allowed to cry. I spent all night figuring out how to work a cheese grater whilst deciphering the Cyrillic.

Nastya coached me through it, and my eyes were opened, to what a work-out cooking can be.

I had always thought of it as simple as; A) heat the noodles, or B) call up Dominoes. Making this borscht felt like shop class. I got tennis elbow from shredding those beets within the first thirty minutes. They showered their red dye all over the wall with every pass, the onions screamed in my eyes like deadly mustard gas. Working through the list of ingredients and instructions, I remember in Russian it literally read “Pull the carrots”?? There was more to overcome here than simply not knowing how to cook.

Another linguistic and cultural note here; the word in Russian for “red” is a derivative of the old Slavic word for “beautiful”. And even now in Russian, the words for "red" and "beautiful" are very similar.

And I have to say, it is a lovely dish, this borscht. I don’t say that because I ground my fingers to stumps preparing it. I mean, there are like seven different shades of red, giving it a richness of deep colors, and globules of sunflower seed oil swirling amongst the textures of the beets, carrots and other ingredients; makes for just a very pretty bowl of soup. The struggle made it better I believe. As a counterpoint to this richness found through struggle, I will reflect that I’ve never stopped to admire a bowl of ramen.

But I followed the instructions to the “t”, (which in Russian looks like the letter “m”) Nastya and her Grandmother would be proud. By morning, my hands stained seven shades of red, and with the kitchen looking like a crime scene, I went to school lugging a fresh homemade pot of authentic Russian borscht, made with only 80% hormone infused products. I buckled the pot into the back seat of the car, ready to feed these betches some culture. I would love to tell you that they were impressed, with my ingenuity, or at the very least curious about this strange red concoction. But alas, I had only travelled to mother Russia in spirit. I recall one of the hens shrieked as I drew the first heaping ladle, dripping with the sinuous red. They were polite enough to try it, but it felt overall that there was a lack of interest. I would say this borscht has a subtle taste that needs to be savored to be appreciated, but beyond questions like; “How do you eat it?” Nobody cared to know more. They were too busy eating Sam's choice nachos and cake with fifteen kinds of artificial frosting. Once at home, I ate borscht for a week and a half.

It was about a month later, around thanksgiving, I met Nastya in Minsk, the same city where Mikhail was from. I remember seeing a billboard for a fast food place that advertised some form of “Texas sandwich”, and it flashed a picture of a cowboy. Wow! They knew about “us”? In all my years of study, I have been wont to find many Americans who can point out Belarus on a map. I remember seeing the old soviet architecture and the bronze sculptures promoting the revolution, and most of all Victory Square. With its towering obelisk and eternal flame commemorating those that gave their lives during the war.

Cultural/historical note here; In most movies about WWII, the Americans paint themselves as the hero, and there is no hiding the atrocities of the red army as it descended upon eastern Europe. That being said, no one else in the war sacrificed or suffered as much as the soviets, or did more to destroy the Nazi war machine than the Russian soldier. Everything in Minsk was built post-WWII, as the entire city was destroyed during the war. This I learned there on a city tour. Just saying, nobody in America has had their city personally destroyed by an invading army. Ya know, except maybe the Navajo.

Before returning, Nastya wanted to buy some chocolate for my kids. She did not skimp. We went to a chocolatier, and she got so much for us, it was too much for one plastic bag. The bag broke with the weight of all the chocolate that magnificent dame bought. The second bag broke!! Only with three bags handled delicately, did we manage to keep it from spilling. And friend, let me tell you. This is not your Hershey’s, this is not your Mars bar. That's fool's gold! Hormones and pesticides! (And probably made with slave labor, though that point could probably be nullified as the Belarusian chocolate is litterally made in a regime) But the Belarusian chocolatier would never be able to keep up with the production quantities of Hershey PA, but I believe a blind folded taste test would soon reveal a land slide victory. Much like a taco truck, the true European chocolate has made an impact. I hold that with all that mad dash for greater returns, something gets lost. Quality, community, human interaction. Murica!!

That’s what I thought about while cooking that night, I was interacting (over the phone) with all the laughs and kitchen shenanigans that you don’t get in a can of condensed soup. I think that’s what Andy Warhol was pointing to when he painted the Campbell’s soup can. And this topic has been written about better by men more worthy than I, you should really read their works. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Russian history is not dark, or that communism works, but I think the American ideal of the ever-increasing profit margin, carries with it its own set of pitfalls. I think you can mass produce bullets, but you can’t mass produce the life that happens between people when life is allowed to happen at a human pace.

Lastly, in Belarus, it was cold. I had spent Thanksgiving Day in Los Angeles awaiting a flight, and seeing the weather forecast, the line graph looked almost flat as the temperatures were barely projected to vary between 69 and 71 degrees all week long. In Minsk it was the same, only the temperatures barely fluctuated between 0 and -3 degrees Celsius. When I got back to Texas the weather graphs of course were whizzing up and down like the damn stock market. But the cold of November in Belarus was legit. Looking out the window of the hotel, I pitied some bastard having to dig in the frozen ground with a spade. Was that the Belarusian equivalent of a backhoe? As much as I bitch about American culture going off the rails, It's not fair to hate 'em if all they've ever done was provide me a cozy life. Especially when I know that, given my work ethic and general aptitudes, I would have been dead long ago living in any other country . I've been asked plenty of times, "Why Russian? Why German? Why Spanish?", "When they were our "enemies"?" Other than a curiosity most likely born of rebellion, and secondly a desire to find out for myself, born of distrusting my parents' narrative, I never really had an answer.

Walking around the city, the night before we left, we walked by a lighted display, I guess for the upcoming holiday season, where I saw someone had written in the snow.

- Polina was here.

Wow, I thought. Polina was here. The simple message resonated with me. Because I too had once written that I was “somewhere”, in wet cement. I observed that Polina had nice handwriting. I don’t know who she was, but there was a sudden culmination of understanding. I guess, this was just another layer coming off, similar to my first taste of uttering my first Spanish words back in the 10th grade. Another humble realization that we’re all just people facing life as it presents itself. On the other side of this message was a person. A living breathing individual, with spirit enough to declare to the world. I was here! Whoever she is. She's, just like me. She's just like you. She has dreams and aspirations. She has stories to tell. And just as I and my parents have been indoctrinated by the American system, Polina was born into the Belarusian system, and is just as frail as we are. We all bleed, and we’re all in this together however they want to pit us against one another. Whoever she was, wherever she is. Polina is not my enemy. Polina is not the boogey man.

Personal note here; To this day, I tend to put 2,000,000 Scoville Trinidad Scorpion Pepper hot sauce in my borscht as I eat it with tortillas. Murica!!