For a person with a surprising and painful lack of childhood memories I seem to remember a lot about the Moscow Summer Olympic Games of 1980. I remember where I was at that time and remember watching the games on a 12 inch black-and-white TV. Since the 1980 Olympics were boycotted by the USA and and over 60 other countries some of you may be seeing the clips below for the first time (and some of you were born after 1980). Boycotting Olympics is a tragic event for the athletes, some of whom may only get one or two shots at competing in the Games in their lifetimes. Moscow Olympics were not an exception, we will never know what the results would look like if all of the countries were participating. Nevertheless, for the Soviet people (especially in Moscow) the Olympics became a two week window when they got a peek at the West and they liked what they saw. The USSR went all out to impress the rest of the world, no expenses were spared, only the best was to surround athletes and the guests in order to show the superiority of the Soviet regime. For years after the Games people were wearing jackets with the Olympic emblem on it and the Olympic Bear is still recognized by most people. Not only the people in the stadium but the whole country cried when the Bear took off during the closing ceremony. I haven’t see one more touching ever since.

It’s hard to believe that I am typing this 28 years later. In 1980 I was busy figuring out how old I will be in the year 2000. It seemed like it was 2000 years away….
Opening Ceremony

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZADbwGdlbA

Closing Ceremony

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGy7JIo4_Oc

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I do…

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There can’t be a Russian meal without a loaf of bread. Nowadays, with everyone trying to lose weight, bread may not be as essential as it used to be but if you have bread in the house you won’t go hungry. I survived two years in the army by eating mostly bread and butter and whatever edible bits I could find in the crappy food we were given; the bread was always fresh and delicious. I have a 92-year old aunt who will not sit down for a meal without some bread; that comes from living through the war, evacuations, bread rationing and hunger.

I wrote about bread before. Luckily, after years of substandard “wonder” bread, bread-baking is making a comeback in this country as it should. Many people responded to the recent Donna’s post about baking bread. What do I have in common with a lady who lived all of her life on the farm? We bake bread! The commonality ended when she wrote about breeding a cow, but still…

I posted this recipe before ,it was published in Cooks Illustrated some time ago. but this time it will be illustrated and the bread will be rye – even better for you. It apparently promotes weight loss, so I ate about half-a-loaf yesterday hoping to lose a lot of weight.

To start, you will need to assemble these simple ingredients:

• 3 cups of flour (15 ounces) consisting of 8 oz of unbleached all-purpose flour and 7oz of Rye flour, plus additional for dusting work surface.
• 1/4 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water (7 ounces), at room temperature
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons mild-flavored lager (that would be beer for you- unsophisticated readers)
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar

You will also need a large-size cast iron pot or Dutch oven. If you feel like throwing away close to two hundred dollars for a fancy one, be my guest (literally, be my guest), I bought mine for $23.

I also recommend getting a scale. It can have multiple uses in the household especially if you are dealing drugs.

1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt in large bowl. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Using rubber spatula, fold mixture, scraping up dry flour from bottom of bowl until shaggy ball forms.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8 to 18 hours; I let it sit overnight and even longer. I usually put it in the oven with an oven light turned on to keep it warm. Here is another important step: if you followed directions you should have 9 ounces of perfectly good beer left in the bottle. If you are a gentleman – finish it, if you are a lady – yell at this lazy no-good domestic partner of yours to come make himself useful and finish this nasty beer. If you don’t have anyone to yell at or your domestic partner is another lady, just go ahead and drink it yourself, no reason to waste a good product. Now relax, you are done for the day.

2. Lay 12- by 18-inch sheet of parchment paper inside 10-inch skillet and spray with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead 10 to 15 times. Shape dough into ball by pulling edges into middle. Transfer dough, seam-side down, to parchment-lined skillet and spray surface of dough with nonstick cooking spray. Parchment and Wax paper may look similar  but they are not the same, do not use wax paper or you bread will taste like you are sucking on a candle.

Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until dough has doubled in size and does not readily spring back when poked with finger, about 2 hours.

Time for another beer.

3. About 30 minutes before baking, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place 6- to 8-quart heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (with lid) on rack, and heat oven to 500 degrees. Lightly flour top of dough and, using razor blade or sharp knife, make one 6-inch-long, 1/2-inch-deep slit along top of dough.

Carefully remove pot from oven and remove lid. Pick up dough by lifting parchment overhang and lower into pot (let any excess parchment hang over pot edge). Cover pot and place in oven. Reduce oven temperature to 425 degrees and bake covered for 30 minutes.

Remove lid and continue to bake until loaf is deep brown and instant-read thermometer inserted into center registers 210 degrees, 20 to 30 minutes longer.

Carefully remove bread from pot; transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature, about 2 hours.

Now, if actually waited for 2 hours (I admire your patience)  you can finally slice your bread and spread some real butter on it, maybe a pinch of salt of you feel adventurous.

Eat is slow, crunchy crust, warm crumb, amazing smell…

Here is a clip from a very famous 1949 movie Kubanskie Kazaki about the joy and excitement of wheat harvesting  at the collective farm.

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I previously discussed my feelings on the subject but I was happy to discover that I am not the only one pondering these questions. A short documentary by a young Soviet-born Jewish-Canadian offers a perspective I can identify with, a point of view from a person who came in contact with a different type of Jewish culture and now wonders if her own Jewishness is somehow not up to par. Since I arrived here at the age of 22 with established worldviews and my own understanding of what it means to be Jewish, I haven’t been subjected to the situations described by the people interviewed in the documentary, but I definitely recognized my own thoughts when she interviewed her Mom (although I do speak better English). I wonder if my daughter feels that way when she deals with her friends who have more active Jewish community and religious lives.

Before the video I’d like to offer a quote from an article on the subject:

It is not surprising that Russian Jews — who love their treyf, enjoy their Christmas trees and keep away from synagogues — leave American, Israeli and German Jews wondering what to think. Perhaps they should begin by considering the notion that Russian Jews have something of great value to contribute to the Jewish world.
Russian Jews, with their radically global view of the Jewish world, with their ability to bring together thousands for a Yiddish concert or a Limmud gathering, with their multilingualism and transnationalism, belong at the center of conversation about Jewish life. With Jews around the globe seeking out new ways of expressing their Jewish identities outside the confines of traditional religious practice, Russian Jews’ own secular, ethnically driven notions of Jewishness, and their experience with maintaining community in multiple homes, may eventually place them at the center, not the periphery, of Jewish experience.

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Not that long ago a person’s love for technology required substantial physical strength. Nowadays anyone can show up on a date carrying a laptop or an iPod. Here is what it would have looked like about 25 years ago.

It was so long ago that this guy

still looked like this:

More old cutting edge technology can be seen here (ignore the Russian text).

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