The Geography of Food

This weekend, the Mrs. went to a craft festival sponsored by a Russian Church in a nearby town. One of the features was food. She told me she was going to bring home some Russian food for dinner. I was intrigued as I had never had Russian cuisine before.

I couldn't wait for her to get home because I was hungry missed her. Now, here's the surprise: Russian food is pretty much like Polish or Hungarian food.

We had something similar to pierogi (but they were triangular) and some kind of savory blintz. We also had stuffed cabbage.

Now, I have no idea why this surprised me. This is a part of the world that shared not only the same political and economic structure for 50 years, but it has the same climate, which means certain produce is available. That would be wheat (from the breadbasket of Europe (the Ukraine) and potatoes from all Eastern Europe. Meat is almost like a condiment, and again, this makes perfect sense because the region is rather poor, and meat is expensive as it uses up so many resources.
I did a little research and found quite a few Russian recipe sites.

Here's one with something we really enjoyed yesterday: pasta with mushrooms.

http://www.ruscuisine.com/cooking-recipes/index.php/pasta-dishes/?recipe=146&offset=0