{"id":27722,"date":"2015-10-07T11:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T16:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=27722"},"modified":"2015-10-06T19:50:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T00:50:00","slug":"some-food-stories-from-a-curious-observer-part-5-life-of-melons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/some-food-stories-from-a-curious-observer-part-5-life-of-melons\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Food Stories from a Curious Observer: Part 5: Life of Melons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watermelons, honeydews, and cantaloupes do not grow well in Central Russia\u2014summers are not hot enough for them. They are brought in in the fall from Uzbekistan (where cotton also grows, just like in Mississippi), Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan by the big trucks, and usually are sold from those very trucks at the parking lots.\"VeraWeb\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Since\u00a0I was a kid, I remember lines of people with big bags, patiently waiting for their turn to load up. I still can\u2019t understand that urge to eat tons of watermelons at once! People are buying as many as they can carry and eating as much as they can\u2014with honey, salt, French bread, or just plain! Yes, it is good for you, cleanses your kidneys and works like a natural Gatorade, with the exactly right amount of minerals and sugars to hydrate you properly. But back home consuming melons turns into some kind of a happy cult! Maybe just because\u00a0the season for them is so short and they are not available at any other time of the year.\u00a0\"MelonsWeb\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I have to admit that it was always nice to bring home a huge stripey monster: green, fresh, so red and\u00a0sugary inside, smelling so grassy and squeaking under the sharp knife\u2014almost like some alive creature.\u00a0I remember being already a student, back home for a weekend, I decided to please my dear\u00a0Grandma, who quietly and almost shyly said that she was craving some honeydew so bad. I didn\u2019t\u00a0remember her ever asking for something, so I was very touched, grabbed a bag, and ran outside.\u00a0I was very bored waiting in a long line. Grandma asked just for one honeydew. After half an hour I decided to buy two. Finally, when an hour or so passed, I proudly lugged home four sweetest\u00a0monstrosities\u2014at least it was worth the wait! They were of that particular sort called \u201cOld Maid.\u201d\u00a0\u201cYou know why? Because it is all wrinkled outside, but so sweet inside,\u201d a handsome, tan, dark-eyed Uzbek vendor explained to me with a bashful wink.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for belonging to the same Cucurbitaceae <\/em>family, squash, zucchini, and eggplant can be\u00a0grown near Moscow very well. We have a very easy and sustainable dish which can be prepared out of them and is popular, tasty, and a little bit different all the time, depending on ingredients which can\u00a0widely vary.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think everyone heard about famous Russian caviar\u2014the expensive salty fish eggs. That vegetable dish\u00a0I am talking about is called \u201cvegetable caviar.\u201d Maybe since it resembles caviar by the orange color\u2014it has\u00a0some carrots in it\u2014or maybe one just wanted to feel like he was eating caviar, too, even if the real one was\u00a0not affordable. They also make it in the food factories and sell in glass jars or cans. It is called zucchini spread or eggplant spread Russian style and can be purchased here in US online or in Russian stores. Believe me, it doesn\u2019t taste fishy at all!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The recipe is simple You take any kind of gourd vegetable, let\u2019s say two big eggplants, or four palm-size squashes. Peel, slice, put on the skillet, add half a cup or a cup of pure sunflower oil (canola works too), add two big peeled shredded carrots, one big sliced tomato, and one chopped onion. Simmer until soft\u00a0 (I would do an hour). Veggies usually give some juice, but may be you would need to add half a cup of water at the beginning. When soft, mash, add two tablespoons of tomato paste, salt, pepper, any kind of herbs and spices. I like curry seasoning, but it is new for me, and we don\u2019t usually do it in Russia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Enjoy hot or chilled.\u00a0It stays in refrigerator for about five days. Sometimes I add a couple of tablespoons of quinoa half an hour before the end\u2014it makes the\u00a0dish more filling. Goes well as a dip or just a side dish with meat, chicken, or fish. Can be poured on top of steamed rice.\u00a0You can also use pumpkin or spaghetti squash and mix veggies up in different combinations.\u00a0If you add one chopped sweet pepper, it would give an additional flavor. If you use three sweet\u00a0peppers instead of squash or eggplant and don\u2019t mash it at the end, you will have a Bulgarian dish called \u201clecho,\u201d which is\u00a0also very popular in Russia.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watermelons, honeydews, and cantaloupes do not grow well in Central Russia\u2014summers are not hot enough for them. They<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":28011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[8,7277,559,649],"class_list":["post-27722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vera","tag-food","tag-food-stories-from-a-casual-observer","tag-vera-2","tag-vera-pa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/MelonsFEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}