Three months in the same place becomes far more about the food overall and not just a single dish.
In the summer of 1993, I spent three months (11 weeks) in Russia – specficially St. Petersburg with a couple of weekends in Moscow.
Breakfast and dinner we were on our own but lunch was a big meal affair. Bread and butter, tomatoes, and cucumbers were on the table when we walked into the dining hall. First up was soup. I can now say, I don’t like borscht; nor do I like caviar…and yes, I tried them! Yuck!!!
Then came the main course – always some form of meat and potatoes. We were never sure of exactly what part of the cow it was from, but at least it was a cow.
And we always got some sort of desert. YUM!!!
The biggest reason food tasted so much different in Russia was due to what they fed their animals and the processing procedures for milk.
You never complained about waiting in line for two hours just to get an ice cream cone…nor did you care what flavour it was; as long as it was ice cream! It was green! I think it was a pistachio flavour.
College kids being what they were, after a couple of weeks of meat and potatoes in all its various forms…they started complaining.
On the first trip to Moscow, we had fish – good stuff – and low and behold, they complained about that too!
But, Moscow had something St. Petersburg didn’t…a McDonald’s! So a group of them headed for the McD’s…you guessed it for hamburgers and french fries (a gamburger and kartofel frie in Russian) – meat and ptotatoes!
I eventually made my way over to check it out; Man, those hamburgers were so much better than they are in the U.S.!
When we finally left Russia, we spent the night in Helsinki. Now, while I only get it very rarely, I love venison; so when I saw reindeer on the menu, I had to give it a try. Oh boy! Good stuff!
There were a couple of dozen of us at the restaurant and after a while, the plates started moving around the table and it turned into a buffet.
Eating was never a problem; shopping could be an interesting venture though.
But it sure was nice to eat real food that wasn’t loaded with all kinds of chemicals for a change.