Since there is no Russian restaurant in this here town and not everyone is so lucky to eat at my house, you can attend the Ethnic Pastry Shop this weekend at the Overland Park’s Holy Trinity Orthodox Church.

Highly recommended is the “Russian Plate” :
Borscht (vegetable & beef soup)
Russian Cabbage Roll on a Bed of Rice
Salad
Babka [...]

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Ivan Rebroff who was neither “Ivan” nor “Rebroff”,became world-famous for singing Russian Folk Songs. My Father always cherished an old “contraband” record of Rebroff’s incredible voice.

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Joe Posnanski linked this, but I would be remiss if I didn’t share it here.

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Reader Grace practically challenged me to a hardship-off. In response to my post “How old am I in dog American years?” she writes:
I was born in pre-economic-Tiger South Korea. We had an outhouse, and took baths in a big tub in the courtyard that my mom filled with hot water. In the winter we went [...]

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My friends NutHatch 47 who sing with a real Russian accent will be preforming this Saturday 10/11/08 @ Korruption starting at 9pm. Check out their website and MySpace.

Who knows I may be there enjoying familiar surroundings.

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Foreigners usually have several complaints about Americans: they are disingenuous, they are obnoxious and they snitch. I think the first two are a simple misunderstanding: in English greetings “How are you” and “How do you do” do not literally mean that someone wants to know about you. Yet many people apply literal translation and [...]

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Sometimes it surprises me how my Blockbuster rental history lists side-by-side true masterpieces and the movies that shouldn’t have ever been made. I don’t really think it reflects on my varied movie interests, I just order whatever looks good that day. Bad movies are there for a reason, they set the zero on my movie [...]

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Dean Reed was an American singer who was more popular in the Latin America and the USSR than in the USA. He would have turned 70 today. Because he was a communist sympathizer he was one of a few English-speaking performers approved to entertain the Soviet people. I remember as a child playing his records [...]

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Some photos made in the USSR when the Iron Curtain still existed periodically circulate around the Internet. This set is a pretty good compilation without confusing Russian text. Some people react with nostalgia, others with hate. It was a controversial time and as it moves further into the past people tend to forget the bad [...]

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8th Annual International Pickle Day will be celebrated the weekend in NYC. Sadly, Kansas City is on the outskirts of the pickling world, but with a little knowledge and some instruction one can still try delicious pickled fruits and vegetables. I featured some recipes on this blog and in honor of upcoming holiday I [...]

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