Cookbook of the Country of the Soviets. Food in stores and at home.
Beer Bar "Barrel". Built in Penza in 1973
I like to go to cafes, eat ice cream and drink it with sparkling water. From her stabs in the nose and tears come out in her eyes.
V. Dragunsky. What I love and what I don't like!
V. Dragunsky. What I love and what I don't like!
History and documents. Last time ours the story of "snacks" in the era of the USSR ended in 1962, the year when I went to first grade. By this time, both grandfather and grandmother had been retired for two years, and various ailments attacked them. Lord, how many times, while my mother was at work, and she often worked with evening parties until 22.00:XNUMX p.m., I had to run to the fire station in any weather to call an ambulance carriage! And quite often it happened ... food poisoning! Either our purity was not very good, or it was the products, but the grandmother used to pickle the same sausage constantly. And it often turned out that my mother was in Moscow, my grandmother was in the hospital, and I needed to feed myself and my grandfather. Yes, and after the maternal culinary delights in the form of pancakes with jam, milk croutons and fluffy whipped omelettes.
Looking at today's abundance of “freezing,” I cannot help but recall that it was also in the USSR, but somehow it was not in demand. For example, I bought Vietnamese frozen pineapples ... The taste is specific, and the first attempt was the last. Cranberries have been sold on the market and are now being sold, only now blueberries, cloudberries and blueberries have been added to it (though, for the sake of the real effect, as the doctors say, you need to eat buckets)
Everything was in the refrigerator, but how to do it? I fried my first scrambled eggs in the first grade. First, on the one hand, then on the other. Then ... then he cooked the soup, made the first mashed potato in his life, and then from the book "Schoolchild's Nutrition" and an impressive mushroom salad in the form of a mushroom from a stuffed egg: a leg and half a tomato with white dots of mayonnaise. Then, from the same book, he learned to make a bull’s eye, whip and bake an omelet, fried eggs. In a word, I mastered a pretty decent set of dishes. All this was appreciated by adults when the grandfather's brother (who lived behind the wall), Uncle Volodya, died, and everyone left to bury him, out of stupidity of the mind, not taking care of dinner. And it was November, snow, cold ... So I arrived at their arrival and cooked a stew of meat, seasoned with dry wine (I read this recipe in the book), and the second - a potato mash pot with boiled sausage slices! They arrive already in a dark, angry, hungry, and then they have lunch ... It is still nice to remember their surprised faces.
There were many compotes in the USSR. But for some reason, I recall Hungarian and Bulgarian, not ours
And so it went. I began to cook at home often in the absence of my mother myself, invented various complicated sandwiches to read Mine Reed in bed at night, which, of course, could not be done. And everyone was happy that their “baby” was gaining weight by leaps and bounds, and that instead of putting me on a diet, forbid me to eat sandwiches with boiled pork and mayonnaise at night, and drink kefir! In a word, if I had not married in time and if my wife (not without difficulty, of course!) Had not accustomed me to proper nutrition, then I would not have seen health at all. In her family, thank God, this was better than mine.
I personally liked our compotes most of all: “Cherry” and “Cherry plum”. You could eat berries, and lay out a battle pattern from the seeds!
But let’s get back to the actual food, or rather to the “snacks.”
There were not as many as they are now, but they were tasty. First of all, for example, I really liked rum grandmothers. Some were smaller and resembled a glass of ice cream, while others were large, blurry. There were more Roma in these, but the small ones were rather dry. There were three types of cakes: eclairs - they were called “custard” in the USSR, biscuit with cream roses and a potato cake. Cream - only oily, very tasty. There are also two cakes - sponge cake and fruit with fruit filled with jelly. The first one in Penza cost 1 p. 20 kopecks., The second - 1 ruble, and I often, having “earned” this ruble in different ways, bought it myself when I wanted sweets. I was always somehow indifferent to sweets. My comrades in the street were very fond of colorful candy balls. They were called Dunkin Joy, and they never bought them from us. There were Tuzik butterscotch sticking to my teeth, Children's Hematogen, lots of all kinds of caramel filled sweets, as well as multi-colored candies in boxes. But the "lemon wedges" (marmalade), just like the cake "Bird's milk", could be bought only in Moscow, and then stood a considerable queue. Such cakes appeared in Penza only after 1993. There were chocolate bars with very tasty and delicate filling, but the Rot-Front chocolates were sold literally on every corner. Truffles were very tasty - they were larger than today's, and ... quite expensive. Very rarely, chocolate bottle sets with liquor inside were on sale, but there were ...
I didn’t really like round small cupcakes with raisins, which today are baked in exactly the same conical tins with profiled walls, as then. But I really liked the big cupcakes “brick”, stuffed with raisins to failure. Large and nutty, with nuts inside, but they didn’t seem so tasty to me.
These bread rolls could also be bought only in Moscow ...
I was a little lover of sweets, but I remember that there were sweets with bears in the forest from Shishkin’s paintings, “Bear in the North”, “Goose Feet,” but I mostly liked only truffles, and even “bottles” of liquor
We never bought jam and jams in jars. Grandmother welded his whole basins. It was stored in a closet in large pots and jugs and sugared so much that it could be cut with a knife. They only cherished raspberry - they gave it to patients along with tea to sweat.
It was only in 1968 that my playmates from Proletarskaya Street finally overtook me in the level of well-being of their families. Their parents received apartments, their salary was increased to 330 rubles. plus they began to pay the 13th as well, so they threw their stoves and kerosene to hell, and we continued to cook in the old house in the summer on a kerosene until 1976, when our house was finally demolished.
Here they are, biscuit cakes with cream
In the same year, my mother received the degree of candidate of historical sciences, we went on vacation to Bulgaria. The way we were fed there made a lasting impression on me. I was especially struck by the cakes there. For 14 days of stay, the same gave only two times! And there was a long distance of dry wine "White Wine". Liter for four for lunch and dinner. Two strange girls were sitting at the table with us, and they all the time were shy about something, including drinking this wine. Well, my mother and I drank this bottle for two, and they, poor fellows, were left with mineral water!
There were biscuit rolls with fruit filling, occasionally meringue cakes and cream pie pastries, and potato cakes were also found in all pastry shops
I was very lucky with wine as a child. Guests and relatives came to us quite often, well, from the age of 7 I was poured a glass of port. And then I somehow got sick with measles, as always, very hard, and our old street doctor came to me, who lived in the neighborhood and in the past, a former Zemstvo doctor - still with a listening tube! “If measles is treated, it lasts 14 days,” he said, “and if not treated, but well looked after, then two weeks.” But so that the rash does not spill out on the internal organs, you need to give Cahors - half a glass in the morning, afternoon and evening. And I began to drink Cahors and perfectly endured this measles. And then, already at the age of 14, I had chickenpox, and they anointed me with zelenka and iodine alternately and, again on his advice, they gave me Cahors, but already a glass at a time. So the store even decided that "the grandfather at the Taratynovs washed down!"
All of our “corn treats” today were in 1955, only the packages were different and they were not in special demand. In any case, I never bought these packages
By 1968, a wonderful household restaurant appeared in Penza — the Golden Cockerel inn, sweets of the same name, and branded vodka. Cafe "Snowball" was opened in a house on the main street of Moskovskaya, where ice cream in balls in vases was served: with jam, raisins and cognac. And in 1973 they built the Barrel Bar in the form of a huge barrel, where, in addition to beer, there were eclairs with salty cream. We, students of Penza universities, were ready to stand any line, if only to get there. And to bring her girlfriend there too was the height of elegance and motivation.
But these semi-finished products were constantly used in my family and in other houses on Proletarskaya Street until 1968, and most likely later.
It's just that I stopped visiting my comrades' kitchens then ... In general, the period from 1968 to 1972 I call for myself the "era of mango juice." Then in all Penza food stores there were rows of metal liter cans of mango juice with a very catchy label in blue and yellow. Were with a red label, but there the juice was more liquid. "Blue-label" cans contained a thick, aromatic and very tasty juice, and cost 1 p. 20 kopecks We really liked him, and we began to drink it regularly, a glass after dinner. I was taken to the hospital a day by the bank when I fell ill again - now pneumonia. “Lafa” continued until 1972, when the stream of cans (and they came from India) for some reason suddenly dried up.
Some products were, but, let’s say, were not very popular. For example, I personally really liked black olives, but to buy them in Penza, and not always, it was possible only at the Don store in the very center of the city, that is, it was far from my house. For all my youth, cauliflower was brought only once to a vegetable store near my house. In general, the “food” at that time was extremely seasonal. In the spring - all radishes have a bunch of 10-12 cents. Then she is not at all. So is strawberry. Neither earlier nor later ... Cucumbers and tomatoes, like watermelons, and melons - all in season. At first, people can’t get enough of cucumbers, then no one is looking at them - they just salt it. The situation is just like in the novel "The Brokeback Bear" by Evgeny Permyak, where it was about the first decade of the twentieth century. Reading it, I drew attention to the similarity of life situations, to speech turns, but what does it mean? Only that such a similarity occurred even 50 and 60 years later. That is, the development of social consciousness was slowly going on. And about that something to grow out of season, in greenhouses, not even a word.
I only read about edible asparagus, but I didn’t even see green olives on sale. But they appeared in abundance after 1977. In the village selmag, where I worked then, there were three types of goods: bread, vodka, Dunkin Joy candies and green Afghan olives
Or, for example, cheese. They bought it for a holiday, cut it beautifully and put it on a plate and serve it to guests. Then ... then in the refrigerator he withered, covered with drops of oil. We didn’t eat it regularly; there was no such tradition. Again, I really liked Roquefort cheese, which I first tried in Moscow in 1972. But in Penza they did not sell it. I had to ask my friends to buy it in the Cheese shop on Gorky Street. Once, two of my comrades were nearly kicked out of a compartment when they drove him, he smelled, and when I watched it turned out that he was moldy and that “you guys were deceived ...” It’s good that they had the mind to remember that the person to whom they are taking it is a “great original” and that “they read somewhere that there is such cheese and it is eaten!” But when they even started giving cheese only half a kilo to their hands, this rule did not apply to Roquefort, and I bought an envy of the whole line at once half a head.
Cheese advertisement from the book “On tasty and healthy food”. The most popular type of cheese in the USSR at that time was processed cheese Druzhba. They were taken by all drunks - a bite for three!
In general, the conclusion will be this: in the USSR there was almost everything that is now, but with a smaller assortment. But, as in the case of information, part of this “everything” was in one place, and people in another. That is, it turned out that you were partly to blame, that you didn’t have something: "you didn’t get it." The food as a whole was seasonal, it was difficult to buy vegetables and fruits out of season. Quality ... perhaps it was better overall. But those who claim that “people are being poisoned today” are also wrong. And you don’t take the pickled one ... By the way, sausages were pink inside, and pink ones weren’t from meat at all. But the products of private bakeries, cheese factories, meat products of farms today are not inferior to the then products, and if possible the choice is superior. Well and, of course, a summer residence. What was grown at the dachas then and now are two completely incomparable differences ...
In the book “On tasty and healthy food” there was such a picture depicting a brass mortar. But here it is not a mortar, but the word "almonds". In all my youth I have never been able to crush him in such a mortar, although I had this mortar in my childhood, and it was just gorgeous
Here she is: our family brass mortar, and she is really very old
She belonged to my great-grandfather. I know from my grandfather that they then pounded sugar in it, which they bought with their “heads” (cones!), Smashed it with a hammer, wrapped it in a cloth, and chopped small pieces from the sugar bowl with special tweezers (saw them in childhood - just a find for the executioner!) pieces. But if crushed sugar was needed (that was exactly what it was called, but by no means sand!), Then in this stupa they pushed it. And coffee beans were also pounded in it. But now it is used for its intended purpose: as it is written in the book “On tasty and healthy food”, almonds are pounded in it.
To be continued ...
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