Merry Christmas!
WtR
How about some common Russian New Year / Christmas recipes that are easy to do and quick. Russians have lots of tasty things to eat this time of the year. It is holiday time you know! These recipes will make even your Christmas / New Year holidays a better, yummy time. Russia has her Christmas like time at New Years, but I thought I would post these recipes early enough to allow the West to make a few Russian treats for Christmas…
Baked Tomatoes With Cheese:
Description: Delicious light appetizer is right to the holiday table. Cheese with tomatoes and mushrooms will be to everyone’s liking…
Method: Slice tomatoes and arrange on the baking pan evenly, season to taste with salt and pepper, cover with chopped mushrooms and top with grated cheese. Put in a preheated oven (med.) and bake until cheese is melted…
Ingredients: 4 ea large fresh tomatoes; 300 g cheese; 1 can stem and pieces mushrooms…
Vitamins Salad:
Description: The name of the salad speaks itself – rich with vitamins, it is a must in wintertime on your table. Such a salad will decorate any holiday table and serve a wonderful appetizer…
Method: Cube lemon with the peel in small cubes. Grate turnip, carrots and apple finely. Combine all the ingredients and add sugar to taste…
Ingredients: 2 ea big carrots; 1 ea apple; 1 ea lemon; 1 small turnip, sugar to taste…
Salad Olivier:
Description: This salad is the creation of a French chef, M. Olivier, who in the 1860s opened a fashionable restaurant in Moscow called The Hermitage. The present-day version has veered quite far from the original, but Salad Olivier continues to be a favorite hors d’oeuvre and side dish for entrées…
Method: Serves 8-10 as an appetizer or 6 as an entrée. Cut the cooked chicken and potatoes into 1/2-inch cubes. Peel the cucumbers and also cut into 1/2-inch cubes. In a large bowl, combine the meat, potatoes, cucumbers, green peas, and onion. Add the mayonnaise and mix gently, so those ingredients are not mashed. Refrigerate the salad until serving time (but for no longer than 4 hours)…
Variation: Vegetable Salad Olivier: Omit the chicken or veal to make a delicious meatless side dish…
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken breast, poached, boned, and skinned, or 1/2 pound lean cooked veal; 1 pound all-purpose potatoes, boiled in their skins and peeled; 2 medium Cucumbers in Brine; 1 cup cooked fresh or frozen peas; 1 medium onion, finely chopped; 1 cup Mayonnaise; 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and quartered; 8 large black Greek olives; 8 sprigs parsley…
Corn Salad:
Description: Corn salad has become very popular for last years. It is very easy to make, will bring pleasure to you and your kids as well…
Method: Shred cabbage very thin and grate a carrot. Chop crab sticks (crab meat). Add corn and salt. Stir mayonnaise into the salad. Mix the salad and refrigerate for a while…
Ingredients: 250 g canned sweet corn; 250 g crab sticks or crab meat; 1 ea large carrot; 200 g cabbage; 200 g mayonnaise; salt…
Cod Liver Salad:
Description: Try this delicious, quick and easy recipe for your next party! Cod liver is rich in vitamins and perfect for dietary cooking. Serves 6-8…
Method: Place the cod liver in a colander and let the oil drain off. Mash the liver with a fork and combine with the chopped eggs and onion in a serving bowl. Add salt to taste and decorate with parsley sprigs and olive halves. Serve with bread….
Ingredients: 190 gram can cod liver in oil; 3 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and chopped; 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped; Salt to taste; Parsley sprigs; Black oil-cured Greek olives, halved…
Sandwiches With Red Caviar:
Description: Sandwiches are a perfect food; they are great for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sandwich must be made in a beautiful way to attract the attention and water the mouth. Ingredients are given for 10 portions…
Method: Slice bread finely. Cut out crusts from bread. Put a small hump of caviar and a decorated piece of butter on a bread slice. Decorate with greens…
Ingredients: 150 g red caviar; 20 g butter; 300 g bread; greens…
Christmas Duck:
Description: Unique taste of Christmas you will find only in this dish! Unusual marinade makes the dish unforgettable for the whole year…
Method: Grease the duck with the marinade and leave for 2 hours. Then put it in a stewing-dish. Don’t add any fat, as duck itself contains a lot of it. Cook for 2 hours on average heat until brown color…
Ingredients: 1 ea duck; Marinade: 100 g dewberry jam; 5 ea cloves; salt; ground pepper…
Fish in Aspic:
Description: Fish in Aspic is famous for its high gustatory qualities that gives the right to consider this dish a true dainty…
Method: Wash and clean fish. Cut the head, tail and fins and pour over cold water. Add roots, onion, salt and cook 25-30 minutes, then add sliced fish and cook until done. Take the fish carefully and arrange as the whole one on a dish. Strain fish stock and add soaked in water in advance 15 g gelatin, bring to a boil and strain again. Decorate the fish with carrot slices, parsley green and pour over half stock carefully. Let it to congeal a little and then pour over the rest…
Ingredients: 1 kg fish; 1 ea carrot; 1 ea onion; parsley; 1 ea bay leaf; gelatin; salt…
Mushrooms Stewed in Cream:
Description: Mushrooms Stewed in Cream is a true Russian dish. Almost every Russian loves mushrooms and can’t imagine winter table without at least pickled mushrooms…
Method: Wash mushrooms carefully and scald them. Chop finely and fry until light brown. Bring cream to boil. Put mushrooms into a baking pan and pour cream over. Make a bunch from celery and dill and put on the top, add salt, pepper and a bay leaf. Cover tightly and put in a heated oven for an hour to stew. When mushrooms are ready, take the green bunch out…
Ingredients: 500 g fresh mushrooms; 1 c cream; 1 tb butter…
Nut Cookies:
Description: Such cookies are very easy and quick to make. Enjoy the pleasure of cooking with your kids and cut out funny animals…
Method: Combine all the ingredients and knead dough. Roll out a flat cake 2 cm thick. Cut out different figurines with a knife. Bake in a preheated oven 230-250 C until golden…
Ingredients: 300 g butter; 300 g sour cream; 3 ea yolks; a pinch of baking powder; 5 c flour; 2 c chopped nuts; 2 c sugar…
Cake “New Year Clock”:
Description: This cake is great just because it is very simple and you don’t need to bake anything…
Method: Ground butter with sugar, add yolks, one at a time and melted chocolate. Chop fruit jelly finely, crumble shortbread and sprinkle with cognac and stir thoroughly. 15 minutes later, put the dough on a dish and shape a cake. Leave the cake in a cold place for a night. In the morning on 31 of December cover the cake with whipped whites with sugar and draw a clock with hands…
Ingredients: 250 g butter; 200 g powdered sugar; 3 ea yolks; 100 g melted chocolate; 250 g fruit jelly; 500 g shortbread; 50 g cognac; 3 ea egg whites…
Fruits And Nuts in Cognac:
Description: This drink will be not only a delicious dessert on the holiday table, but also an excellent gift if you pour the cognac in a beautiful bottle…
Method: Put all the ingredients in a glass bottle and pour over cognac. Cover tightly and leave in a dark place for 3 weeks…
Ingredients: 250 g dried figs; 125 g dried dates boneless; 125 g walnuts; a pinch of cinnamon; 1 ts vanilla; 4 ea cardamom seeds; 1/2 ea lemon peel; 50 g sugar; 0,75 l cognac…
Sbiten:
Description: Hot drink made from spices and herbs with honey or sugar. It was purchased in general only in Moscow in crowded places. Sbiten is considered Russian national winter beverage…
Method: Bring water to boil, add honey and jam. 5 minutes after add spices to the water and cook for 5 minutes. Serve hot…
Ingredients: 5 liters water; 800 g berry jam; 200 g honey; 2 g ginger; 2 g cloves; 1 g cinnamon…
There that should give you something to keep you busy this holiday. You can find something to tantalize someones taste buds in that array of recipes…
Have a nice holiday from Kyle and Sveta…
WtR
4 hours long….lets see how many politicians can do this for four hours, much less four minutes!
Worth watching to find out stuff, but the Russian news has hit the highlights…
Also….it is so long of a video!
But it is the truth and nothing but the truth…
WtR
Night Before Christmas: Russian Style… (Video)
Very good and worth watching video:
First video is FLV file format….very old and in most cases does not work. Scroll down and get MP4 version if you need to…
Download – nightbeforexmas FLV version
Above is the old FLV file format. You can still download it, if you desire?
New MP4 format below:
MP4 Download link… (Just load link & right click and save video as.)
Many years ago Sveta and I made this video from a Russian archive we found. Since then thousands upon thousands of our readers have watched this movie in the last few weeks, not including the 10’s of thousands before that over the years. Therefore, once again (and again over the years), I updated it and I added a link this year to allow anyone to download the file and keep it. It is a Soviet classic and some web browsers do not play the file correctly. It is now in both FLV and MP4 available above… (Or here.)
Download – nightbeforexmas FLV version
MP4 Download link… (Just load link & right click and save video as.)
If all else fails just click the image and it many times will start playing. It works good in Chrome, fair in Firefox, good in Opera, and terrible in IE…
This way you are able to watch the movie and use your video player inboard your OS…
Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…
Stop!
Get that out of your head, like I had to, and watch this Russian version, and do not have those sugar plums dancing in your head…
The other version is of the Western Santa Claus. The Russian version is the video above that Sveta and I spent painstaking days trying to get it to a position, that English speakers could attempt to watch it. This version has now been stolen and used on YouTube as “their own” original… LOL… 😉
“The Night Before Christmas” – a story written by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol…
Sum it up: Interesting story (Part of the Farm Series by Gogol,) about how on Christmas Eve, “The Devil made Me Do It!”
Nikolai Gogol
Night Before Christmas is a story of the sins. Taking the form of a fairy tale and we all know fairy tales are vicious stories of the old times. This video tells the tale with a devil, a woman, Vakula the blacksmith and the intertwined people amongst them all. Vakula wants to win the heart of the woman – named Oksana…
This is wishing you an upcoming very Merry Christmas, from Sveta and Kyle…
WtR
Night Before Christmas: Russian Style… (Video)
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”
– claimed to be the last words of Hassan-i-Sabbah (1034–1124)…
While very few people know that this code was actually stolen by advertisers in AD 1200 and that it is now a very Western Empire slogan to live its existence by….yet it still is not as it seems and therefore if interested….read this link about the origins…
Origins – Jeff Taylor (vanderbilt.edu)
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”
Thus, we can do and get away with anything!
WtR
I tried to catch Santa once! It was a goal of mine as a little tyke. I had to prove to everyone that Santa was real and that no matter what, there was a Santa…
Santa is real and I think telling people who want a Santa that there is no Santa, is akin to destroying Christmas. Santa is in the heart and Santa does not represent material items to me. Santa represents, God and Jesus to me…
I just look at him like a different messenger for God. Now I realize that we have commercialized Santa, but then we have a commercialized God even more. Santa is a one day a year proposition and God is at the very least a every Sunday, money-maker and many people make that Wednesday, Saturday and I have seen the plate passed asking for money, 7 days a week…
Neither one is right and moral, just that one is a lessor of the evils. I can not help that we have created a world based on greed and it has taken over all our lives including religion…
So I tried to catch Santa as a little tyke and that is what makes me laugh as I see this photo about catching Santa. I was the cat…
I would even get up in the middle of the night and check on my trap. I remember eating the cookies one Christmas and the milk was hot. That did not go over well with me. I like cold milk. Then I got worried that Santa would miss his treat and I tried to get more cookies and such. I knocked the cookie jar off the counter and broke everything. That messed up that trap. Why I even had a rope around the plate of cookies and milk. To be honest, I was not sure how that would trap him, but at 4 years old, you just knew that cowboys roped things and it had to work; Right?
It all started about how to catch Santa when I was around three and I watched my parents put out cookies and milk. In the morning the cookies were almost all gone and the milk was definitely gone. I remember that I was so excited, “Santa was here! Santa was here!” I screamed and that was the start of the plans to catch Santa. For if he ate the food, he could be caught; Right?
That was the same at how I set up rabbit traps and that I did all the time. So it was no surprise to me when I never caught Santa, I never caught any rabbits either…
Then in the same token, I never have seen or caught Jesus and or God. In fact there are many mythical wonders that I never caught and saw first hand…
But that never stopped me from believing and destroying people’s spirit about things as God, Christmas and a thousand other things, is just downing life to the max. We have such few real treats in life, that we deserve a bit of imagination and dreams…
“Yes world there is a Santa Clause!”
I just never caught him yet and when I do, I will let you see him…
WtR