I am slowly coming to grips with the excellent variety of dairy products available in Russia. I was initially confounded by the sheer variety of what appeared to be milk cartons in the fridge. When I first asked, I had got a simple 'It's creamy milk for coffee' as an explanation. It appears that one doesn't buy milk and cream here, but rather a selection of dairy products to keep in the refrigerator and then select your dairy product of choice by fat content for each use. I am currently consuming frozen strawberries (they got kicked out of the freezer in favour of space for icecream) with 10% fat milk. It's better than normal cream, I think. The lowest I've seen is 3.2%-4% which I think is your normal standardised milk, but they only seem to go up from there! Not that I mind of course, but it is fascinating.
As for the other dairy products... I don't think the English language has words for half of them. I tried to get some butter one day (it was in a tub like margarine), asked one of the kids "Is this butter?" got a no and said "So what is it then?" Oh ummmmm........... no answer. It had pictures of cows on the front, and came in a margarine tub, it seemed like a reasonable guess! I think it is some sort of cross between cheese and butter, it's quite nice. A bit like cream cheese, but creamier, more buttery.
Altogether, Russia seems to have a greater supply of dairy products than France, although they claim they aren't as heavy- apparently they don't do 'cream' like the English! Certainly I'm not suffering that problem I had in France, where every meal seemed to be made of cream freche!
In other kitchen-in-Russia related news, there is a frog hopping it's way across the floor. I had better go and liberate it.
As for the other dairy products... I don't think the English language has words for half of them. I tried to get some butter one day (it was in a tub like margarine), asked one of the kids "Is this butter?" got a no and said "So what is it then?" Oh ummmmm........... no answer. It had pictures of cows on the front, and came in a margarine tub, it seemed like a reasonable guess! I think it is some sort of cross between cheese and butter, it's quite nice. A bit like cream cheese, but creamier, more buttery.
Altogether, Russia seems to have a greater supply of dairy products than France, although they claim they aren't as heavy- apparently they don't do 'cream' like the English! Certainly I'm not suffering that problem I had in France, where every meal seemed to be made of cream freche!
In other kitchen-in-Russia related news, there is a frog hopping it's way across the floor. I had better go and liberate it.
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