In 1958, six months after the Sputnik was launched, the Life Magazine ran an article comparing an American and a Russian student and drawing conclusions about problems with the American education system. Many of these problems are still with us today; while the Russian education is not what it used to be, the American educators are still busy making kids feel good about themselves, rather than teach, resulting in generations of students without advanced and, sometimes, basic skills.
You can read the article for yourselves and I will post just photos starting with the Russian student Alexei Kutzkov and continuing with his American Counterpart Stephen Lapekas in the next post.
Before you look at these photos, I want to point out that not all the Soviet schools in 1958 looked like this one, complete with chemical, physical and mechanical labs and not all the students were genii. Generally in Moscow everything looked better than in the rest of the country, but in every big city there were a few “show” schools, like the one I attended, happy to display the advantages of the Soviet system to the unsuspecting foreigners. Before the showtime an extraordinary amount of cleaning, scrubbing and painting occurred, combined with special deliveries of rare equipment and teaching aids; it wasn’t unheard of to serve improved lunches during the VIP visits; the school had to impress or else. Nevertheless, even without all these things the Soviet education system was one of the best in the world, not only producing world-famous scientists but maintaining high intellectual level in the rest of the population.
By the way, I can watch the girl on the right for hours, something hypnotic about her dancing.
El Camino Real in Kansas City, KS was recently listed as the number one on the Kansas City’s Top Ten Cheap Tacos list, which I am following as if it was a list of the 10 commandments of cheap food. After several visits to the place I would agree that it’s undoubtedly one of the top taquerias in the metro. I usually avoid the word “authentic” because, as I have mentioned before, I have never had a meal in Mexico outside the feedlots for the pasty fat people otherwise known as resorts in Cancun. However, if I had to imagine what the Mexican people eat at home, it would be something like what’s served at El Camino Real.
Over the past several years my idea of the “real” Mexican food has evolved to exclude anything with puddles of melted cheese and mountains of lettuce, not that there is anything wrong with that. The type of Mexican taco I came to like is a simple mound of filling on a small corn tortilla with cilantro, onions and pico de gallo served with it or on the side. Sometimes you will get a lime but that’s as fancy as it goes. The secret is in simplicity which is what I appreciate in any food.
At El Camino Real the kitchen area is open so I was able to annoy the cooks hanging around and taking pictures. This is the first place where I saw the tortilla-making contraption and was able to capture its operation on-camera.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bVCsBijFHA
The process is pretty simple. After tortillas are rolled…
…they go on the griddle…
the spit and mixed with pineapple you can see above it …
…few more minutes of cooking…
…and done!
On the left-hand side you can see al pastor, on the right side is asada – steak and on the top is the lengua – tongue.
Here is another photo slightly turned:
You can see the rest of the taco selection in the menu:
The place is clean and has plenty of seating. I was able to park right outside of the door but there is plenty of non-metered parking in the area. On both of my visits, there was at least one English-speaking person in the restaurant, usually the waitress. If you dine in you will get complimentary chips, salsa and pico de gallo. Carry-out didn’t come with chips or pico de gallo, but I didn’t ask. They did send plenty of chopped cilantro, onions, salsa and limes.
3 tacos and a Mexican Coke (which is now sold at Costco, at least in Midtown) ran up to $6.48, a little price to pay for what the greatest restaurant critic of all time (to be left unnamed) called “the best tacos I had in my entire life”
*I used Google Translate, I am not exactly sure El Camino Real is The Royal Road
Starting with this post and continuing here, I promise this is the last one using the set of photos from 1938 Kansas City. There are many reasons why I do this, but the main two are: I enjoy it and I feel like somewhat of an explorer, possibly drawing attention to the photos that haven’t been seen for many years if ever. Any old photos of this quality are fun to browse through but I especially enjoy finding the ones related to this area or to my previous life in the USSR. You may find all my previous photo-posts here.
Just like the previous batch, this one ends with some vintage NSFW, not that I am trying to compete with TKC, but the fact that a Life Magazine photographer even submitted these in the end of the 1930’s is in itself amusing. Interestingly enough, this is not a unique occurrence in the Life Photo Archives, I had few more shared in my post about the Persephone.
All the photos are linked to the larger images, feel free to click and look at the detail.
I would like to thank many readers of this blog, people who thought enough of my writing to stop by and leave a comment, and many others who know me on Twitter, Facebook and in real life (there are about 4 or 5 of the lucky ones). I hope you all have a great year, stay healthy, employed and sexually active happy.
This is an old (1956) Soviet song – “5 minutes til the New Year”:
The Jewish Holiday of Passover is coming up and many of you are seeing boxes of matzos piled somewhere in a more visible location than usual in your grocery store.
The truth is, matzos are sold year round in most stores and despite having only two ingredients they are as delicious as any plain crackers, made in a clean controlled environment by the guys who wash their hands and don’t masturbate on Saturdays (maybe not at all, but not on Saturdays for sure).
I wrote before how my Dad went to buy matzos at the only remaining synagogue in our city and we ate them for the rest of the year. Now that synagogue looks like this (photos taken from here):
Odessa Synagogue from the FrontOdessa Synagogue From the Back
There is no reason why you, my non-Jewish readers, should be deprived of matzos and tasty things you can make out of them. By the way, the alternate title of this post was “What would Jesus eat?”, because Jesus was Jewish, he celebrated Passover and ate matzos.
In this post you will learn how to make a matzo omelet, ormatzo-brei or, as we call it, matzo-babka. For this recipe you will need 3-4 sheets of matzos, 2 eggs, pinch of salt and a small amount of butter.
Boil some water, you will need less than a cup. Break matzo in small pieces, it crumbles and breaks easily. Don’t try to pulverize it, just break it up.
Pour some hot water over it, just enough to soften up the matzo pieces so they are not crunchy. All the water should ideally soak in, so don’t pour too much, there shouldn’t be any standing water on the bottom of the bowl, toss the matzos until all the water is absorbed. Let it sit for a few minutes.
Mix up a couple of eggs with a fork.
Pour of the matzos and mix, add salt to taste.
Melt a tablespoon of butter in the skillet. Pour the mixture into the skillet, spread it out evenly and cover.
Cook on medium-low for 4-5 minutes. Now if you think you are the next Food Network star you can try to flip the whole thing, I just cut it in four pieces with a spatula and flip each piece individually.
Cook for another 3-4 minutes uncovered, for the first few times (and I know there will be many more) keep an eye on the babka to make sure it doesn’t burn.
You can serve it as savory dish, side dish or breakfast…
…but it also tastes great with honey, syrup and jelly.
There are multiple other recipes with onions, mushrooms and other additions, but just like the matzos are made only with flour and water, I don’t feel anything else is necessary here. It’s hard to improve on perfection.
Matzos can stay on your counter forever, or close to it. They might get a little stale but I guarantee you will eat the whole box before it ever happens. They are good in soups, or as a snack and in always popular with women matzo-babka.
