Tatya Feia's Homemade Hootch and Raw Eggs

We have been touring Suzdal and Vladimir for the past three days, and saw a dozen ancient churches, cathedrals, and monestaries. Every morning the Rotarians drop us off with interpreters for touring each day and then we meet them at the end of the day for dinner. Yesterday was a special treat. Sergei, the president elect of the Rotary club, took John and me to his Aunt Feia's house out in the country. It was a real Russian farmhouse as we had seen in the Plyos museum, in a village with about twenty other similar houses surrounded by fields blackened where the grass had just been burned off. First Sergei gave us a tour of the garden in back. It's about 50 feet by 100 feet. With the dictionary we looked up every growing thing there: (potatoes, beets, onions, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries (I wouldn't know a gooseberry if it goosed me) and apple, pear, and cherry trees.

Then Aunt Feia came back from visiting the cemetary. She was a short stout woman in a print dress wearing a red Mack Truck baseball cap. Sergei explained we didn't have much time, as dinner at the hotel was being served soon, but maybe we could look inside for five minutes. We entered the house through a low door in back which was where the garden tools were kept. Then we came into a room where there was a brick oven. In the back Sergei explained that small children and old or sick people slept on top of the oven in winter to keep warm . There was a kitchen with a small refrigerator, a gas stove, a table, chairs, television, and an saint's icon in the corner. There was a room at the very front of the house which had been completely rebuilt as it had collapsed three years ago. Back in the kitchen, Feia said she had to give us a little something to eat. She got a sack of mushrooms that she had dug in the woods, cut up an onion, threw them in a bowl and splashed sunflower oil over it. She laid out a loaf of black bread. The she pulled out a small pitcher of homemade vodka, poured it into a bottle, and added an equal amount of water and shook it up. "Medvedev doesn't know about this" said Sergei. We drank the first toast to friendship, John and I going bottoms up Russian style and Aunt Feia sipping. Sergei was only drinking Sprite since he was driving. Then out came some pork, lard and horseradish (my conscience, sounding like my primary care doctor, complained a bit) and we drank another shot to beauty. Then out came an egg and spoon, which we cracked and drank down raw (Like in Rocky I) and a third shot for womankind. Lastly, she made some black tea and brought out shortbread cakes and chocolate.

Sergei told us this is what real Russian people are like, even if the politicians are arguing, the regular country people just want peace and quiet. John, being a gardener, could appreciate how city people in Russia like to spend their weekends at places like this.

I am definitely giving the Red Sox hat to Feia, she's the only person in Russia I have seen wearing a baseball cap and she should have one to remember us by.