My sweetpea loves peanut butter. It was not something she grew up with, so it is special to her. I grew up with peanut butter and jelly as a kid mainstay. Never thought twice about running around with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not jam, jelly….Welch’s Grape Jelly…
But, Svetochka has fallen in love with…
Peanut butter, real butter and toast…
Svetochka loves this…
Forget the jelly, just toss some butter on first and then after it melts some on the toast. Put a layer of peanut butter on the still warm toast…
Peanut butter has until recently been very expensive and I tried to stay away from the taste treat of peanut butter. But then I noticed, along with the drop in many food items in Russia, that roasted peanuts are dirt cheap and I thought, “What about peanut butter?”
Good question….Maynard…
And I discovered before Christmas in this article below…
Therefore, I keep a stock of cheap peanut butter now and little Miss Sweetpea likes to eat peanut butter for breakfast and supper/dinner. Breakfast is on toast and dinner is on crackers. It is her new dessert at night and a happy start to the day at breakfast…
Svetochka spent the weekend at her mom’s and she came home a tidbit grouchy. Sveta took a jar of peanut butter, but her mom decided that she did not need it and Sveta did not get any all weekend. But…
Last night she ate several crackers with peanut butter and this morning I made her two whole wheat toasts, with real butter and yummy peanut butter…
On the 14th of February 2019…. Forbes printed an article about (Want To Find A Rich Person In Russia? Look For The Lemons) Well to the cringing of Forbes and the lying Lizzy Saxe, Russians did not take long to discover how to find a Rich Russian…
Forbes объявил лимоны символом богатства у россиян — В американском журнале Forbes вышла статья под названием «Хотите найти богатого россиянина? Ищите лимоны» (Want To Find A Rich Person In Russia? Look For The Lemons). Как пишет автор статьи Лиззи Сакс, присутствие этих цитрусовых в рационе россиян является признаком богатства. —– Forbes announced lemons as a symbol of wealth among Russians – Forbes published an article titled “Do you want to find a rich Russian?” Look for lemons ”(Want To Find A Rich Person In Russia? Look For The Lemons). As the author of the article, Lizzie Sachs, writes, the presence of these citrus fruits in the diet of Russians is a sign of wealth.
Now thanks to Google and its cach system. I found the original, before it was erased forever from the internet. This is it below…
Hi Lizzy Saxe…
Feb 14, 2019, 10:31am Original title: Want To Find A Rich Person In Russia? Look For The Lemons – By Lizzy Saxe
I write about the future of food, business, and culture.
Fresh fruit has been a status symbol since time immemorial.
The Greek god of excess, Dionysus, is often depicted swathed in grapes. Southern mansions are graced by pineapples, a symbol of hospitality. Pomegranates, figs, apples, pears, peaches: You name it, it probably represents fertility, beauty, abundance or even immortality.
And now, some new data is showing that nothing has changed in the 21st century.
What do you associate with lemons? Freshness? Summer days? Coastal climes? Well, it seems that in Russia and Southeast Asia, they’re using them to show off.
See, back in January, I attended the ICR Conference, a huge venture capital event where I was able to sit down with Harold Edwards from Limoneira, a gigantic, fascinating company that has been growing lemons and other citrus fruits in California since 1893. Limoneira started buying land and water rights from the very beginning, and today it owns a staggering 14,500 acres of California land where it grows everything from avocados to cherries. As such, it sells internationally.
Harold Edwards, is President and CEO of Limoneira.
Harold and I talked about a bunch of things, from how Limoneira’s investing in its employees to the sustainable solutions (Insects! Solar! Smart water management!) it uses to keep its trees and the planet healthy. But what really sparked my interest was the story Harold told about how tracking global buying patterns have led him to discover an unexpected trend.
Harold noticed that “Russians consume a lot more lemons per capita than many other parts of the world. I was wondering, is that because they drink a lot of vodka? Is it because they’re big tea drinkers? Why are they using so many lemons?” He started to investigate. He discovered that the answer wasn’t quite that universal.
Unsurprisingly, lemons don’t grow in Russia. It’s too cold to produce them, so you have to buy them from far, far away. That makes the sour yellow citrus expensive. So expensive, in fact, that, “wealthy Russians really like to incorporate lemons into their lifestyle. It communicates to people that they have the means to be able to afford them. They call it the bling of produce.”
A lemon tree, definitely not located in RussiaGetty
As Limoneira started to dig into this, the team found that lemons that were perceived to be higher quality – California has a certain caché – were being purchased far more than lemons in general: “We then started to see similar things in parts of Southeast Asia. I thought it was just because there were a lot more restaurants that were cropping up, a lot more retail shopping opportunities, more disposable income. I thought that was driving all this demand, and certainly, that is part of it. But it’s also become an aspirational item… as more people are starting to have money in these burgeoning middle-class economies, you’re starting to see a lot more consumption from them because they can.”
I asked Harold if he thinks this aspirational citrus boom had anything to do with a fetishized idea of Westernness, and his answer was careful, “I don’t want to be culturally insensitive or say that our culture is superior because it’s not. But I was in Hong Kong yesterday, and as you go around you see a lot of Western brands all throughout China now. Obviously, there’s the Kentucky Fried Chicken story, there’s the Starbucks story, these Western brands that become iconic and coveted as aspirational.” That said, he thinks that ideas of how great California may or may not be only go so far in explaining this, “I went to a couple of grocery stores while I was there, and it’s interesting. You go into these retailers, and the biggest section by far is the produce section. It’s packed. That’s where every consumer is spending their time.”
By tracking the buying patterns of lemon-eating consumers around the world, Limoneira has found that lemons are a remarkable indicator of upward mobility. Americans say that the “world is your oyster,” but to these buyers, the world is more like a lemon, easily in reach, even across oceans.
Then they realized how simple-minded it all looked and hurriedly changed the article. The article is still pathetic and is still of a mindset of We The West are Perfect, but they did change witless to less empty-headed (Lizzy Saxe seems to be empty-headed! Forbes is witless!)…
This article was updated on 2/17/19 to more accurately reflect social status in Russia. Fresh fruit has been a status symbol since time immemorial. The Greek god of excess, Dionysus, is often depicted swathed in grapes. Southern mansions are graced by pineapples, a symbol of hospitality. Pomegranates, figs, apples, pears, peaches: You name it, it probably represents fertility, beauty, abundance or even immortality. Now it seems to be an indicator of upward mobility.
This article was updated on 2/17/19 to more accurately reflect social status in Russia. (Oh really?)
Thank God for Forbes and Lizzy Saxe. I have lived in Russia for 13 plus years and never knew how to find a rich person. You see almost all Russians drive fancy cars, eat caviar, take lots of time off, party constantly and throw money around like there is no tomorrow. Damn, we have fireworks popping off almost every night. The Russians are so rich they love them fireworks, as they eat black bread with caviar and sit on the hood of their Mercedes……
But I could never tell the really rich ones from the average Russian….You see they use to have Blue Lights on their cars, but they had those taken away from them and now we all look the same…
My Svetochka loves lemons and puts it in her hot tea…
Damn people, a lemon costs about 8 rubles (middle of winter remember, in summer they are dirt cheap) each at the local store and they have hundreds of them at all stores (They even have them in the Russians Villages!)….Oh by the way, that is 12 cents for you poor Americans… 😉
