Poison Ivy League

Friday: cocktails and sushi

2009-03-07T10:37:00.001-08:00

We had our sushi making party last night, and I decided to make a cocktail to celebrate spring. I went to college in Washington, so late March meant the arrival of cherry blossoms-- as well as many, many thunderstorms. Some of my favorite memories from college entail walking over to the tidal basin on late afternoons after class to see baby pink ring of cherry blossoms under the heavy, gray sky.

The Cherry Blossom

1 oz vodka (we used Russkii Standart, a staple around the Rhodin-Winder household)
4 oz soda water
4 oz 100 percent tart cherry juice
juice of 1/2 lime

It was yummy. After a round of drinks, it was time to get down to work. Before our guests arrived, I began prepping the sushi ingredients. This time, we used a rice cooker to make the sushi rice, and while the cooker pot was a bit harder to clean, the rice came out fluffier yet stickier, and certainly tasted much more flavorful. I cut up some carrots and spring onions, and Alex cooked up some shitake mushrooms. When the guests arrived, I began to prep the fish. Within minutes, everything was ready:

Everyone made some maki. We ended up with more fish than we had rice for. For the last role, we tried to stuff in all the excess fish, but still ended up with a couple extra pieces, which we ate on their own.

Needless to say, it was impossible to keep the kitties off the counter after the maki was made.

valentina tereshkova's wedding

2009-03-01T17:17:00.001-08:00

in the central moscow zags:

Poison Ivy League RADIO HOUR

2009-03-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

The March 1 episode of the poison ivy league radio hour is up. Just click here. Enjoy!

Playlist:

1. Al Green: Oh, Pretty Woman
2. Scared of Chaka: The Millionth Mile
3. Lily Allen: I Could Tell
4. Dillinger Four: Gainsville
5. Punk 29: Thinking and Dreaming
6. Wanda Jackson: Day Dreamin'
7. The Love Language: Lalita
8. Vivian Jackson and the Prophets: Anti-Christ
9. Pao Pei Lee: Alanna

weather

2009-02-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it was 55 degrees, today 45, and tomorrow 29. I'm dreaming of beirut right now...

making sushi

2009-02-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

Maybe even too much! There is a sushi-grade fish market down the street from our apartment. Although it's close we don't usually walk in that direction. But today we went to the cambridge antique market and on our way back stopped in the fish market.

I want to have a sushi making party in the near future, but I've never made sushi before, so I thought this afternoon might be a good time to try it out. We weren't sure if we had rice vinegar at home (we did) so we bought a bottle of that, some wasabi, some nori, some sushi rice, and I bought some scallop and hamachi. Alex is a vegetarian, so I ordered enough for one. It turned out to be enough for 3 or 4, I would say!

Anyway, I made 2 huge hamachi maki with avocado, one scallop and scallion maki, and then for alex a carrot, avocado and scallion maki. They came out well. I used a recipe that called for 2 cups of rice, 2 cups water, 2 tbls rice vinegar and 2 tbls sugar. I think next time I would double the amount of rice vinegar.

I should also think of sharpening my knives sometime soon!

my boyfriend's a rockstar

2009-02-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

woohooo... alex got into NYU, which makes his grad school acceptance stats 2 out of 2 (still waiting to hear from columbia). his potential adviser called him and let him know that he got in and got a full fellowship+stipend+extra fellowship+ only has to ta for 2 years!

job searching

2009-02-27T07:15:00.000-08:00

SO... I'm looking for a job, and am starting to get a bit desperate. It's not totally logical, since I don't know where I will be living next year (could be New York, could be Oxford), but I've been checking out options nevertheless. Though I'd ideally find a job writing, I checked Craig's List general jobs yesterday to see what was available. Not much that looked interesting, but this caught my eye:

looking for a nanny/house keeper. the job requires a lot. you would be taking care of my two year old son who is very hard to handle and would need experience with autistic children. talking on your cell phone while you are working is not permitted. you must dress in slacks and a colored shirt everyday that i will provide. you will be responsible for all meal planning for my son and me as well-we are both on very strict diets. you will be responsible for all house chores-food shopping ,laundry,ironing,vacuuming,mopping floors etc. the apartment must always be extremely neat clean and organized at all times. which requires several cleanings throughout the day. you are required to sleep over twice a week and from friday to sunday one weekend each month. you must have extremely good personal hygene.
if ALL of these things sound great than please reply. if not please do not waste my time because you will be asked to leave or worse be fired within the first day you start work.
i am a busy mom and i expect things to be a certain way and i do not have time for people who are not energetic, dont love what they do, or have any kind of attitude.
meeting up with other nanny friends is not ok. my son needs one one time and i will set up playdates when appropriate.
looking to try someone out by this weekend.
i do not offer health insurance. please email me at griffin2480@gmail.com

* Compensation: $700 a week in cash
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Ok well this sounds like the worst woman in the world to work for. She's looking for a nanny, a housekeeper, and a cook, and is paying aprox $30,000 per year. Both Alex and I agree that such a job should pay at least $60,000. But even at that wage, who would apply for this job? And really, if you want to be taken seriously, lady, please use correct grammar and punctuation.

valentines day lobsters (and pants)

2009-02-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

the beach

2009-02-15T08:04:00.001-08:00

bowling alley

2009-02-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

Cambridge, MA

more moscow photos

2009-02-13T20:47:00.001-08:00

photos from moscow

2009-02-13T17:03:00.001-08:00

i finally developed my last roll of film today from moscow. the colors at the market are so much brighter than i remember.

from the nytimes today

2009-02-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

February 12, 2009, 6:30 pm
Country, Vodka and Sour Cream
By Alexander Nazaryan

There are few bars in my native city of St. Petersburg, and none at all, as far as I can tell, in Brighton Beach, the Russian enclave of Brooklyn to which I return whenever the memory of stuffed cabbage dumplings and accordion music begins to beckon. Not that sobriety has too much traction in either: when I returned to St. Petersburg in 2003 for the first time in 20 years, it was much more common to find open beers in the morning crowd than cups of coffee. And in the extravagant cabarets of Brighton Beach ― those gilded mafiya haunts now frequented by well-heeled families from Montclair and Stamford ― each dinner table is marked by an endless cavalcade of Smirnoff and Courvoisier.

The notion that Russians love to drink is true, but somewhat misses the point. Russians love abundance, and alcohol ― especially vodka ― has been one of the few steady pleasures in a nation historically steeped in war, poverty and unrest. During the Soviet era, vodka promised a sanctuary from Marxism-Leninism: ideology does not exist at the bottom of a shot glass. Mikhail Gorbachev must have forgotten that when he launched his misguided anti-alcohol campaign during the bleak mid-80s as the Soviet dream was on the verge of unraveling. The historian William Pokhlebkin, in his “A History of Vodka,” an amusingly thorough account of Russia’s love affair with “the little water,” writes: “The clumsy prohibitionist measures taken against vodka were not only ineffective … but contributed to the disruption of state finances.” When vodka became scarce, many resorted to making their own, known as samogon, which sapped the nation of its sugar reserves and further enraged the thirsty populace, as there was now nothing to sweeten tea.
I learned to drink like an American, because becoming American was something every Russian immigrant aspired to.

My family left for the United States around this time, and I mostly grew up in Connecticut, in a household where alcohol was less common than Sprite. I learned to drink like an average American, because becoming American was something every Russian immigrant aspired to, even if it meant aping a culture that we hardly understood. Several of us “new Americans” went to college together and joined fraternities, and suddenly we were drinking Milwaukee’s Best from plastic cups instead of discussing Solzhenitsyn in some cramped kitchen where cold vodka and political unrest flowed freely. In those days, the only nod to my roots was a miniature Soviet flag that drooped from its resting place inside a novelty beer cup I’d smuggled back from Cancun.

That changed when I graduated college and moved to New York, where I worked seriously on a biographical novel about St. Petersburg. It went nowhere ― first novels rarely do ― but last year I started working on a second novel, about the organized crime that thrived in Brighton Beach when many of the Soviet Union’s finest criminal minds made their way to America’s golden shores, where the getting proved a lot easier with the K.G.B. conveniently half a world away.

Writing requires research, and research in Brighton Beach ― if it is to be faithful ― requires drinking. These days I have many willing “research assistants” in the form of American friends for whom neighborhoods like Brighton remain a largely foreboding but tantalizing ethnic hinterland. Like Virgil leading Dante through the netherworld, I guide them through the maze of caviar hawkers and overflowing fruit stands, past the overpriced restaurants on the Riegelmann Boardwalk, to Café Gina, a wonderfully inauspicious restaurant that is perhaps the neighborhood’s best paean to those twin loves ― food and drink ― of the elusive Russian soul.

Here we eat only as Politburo fat-cats could have back in the day, while the rest of the country stood in line for meager provisions: meat-stuffed cabbage leaves swimming in tomato sauce; steaming Ukrainian borscht with dollops of sour cream; veal dumplings, also covered in sour cream; and, of course, pumpernickel bread stacked with pickled herring and onion slivers, chased with a shot of vodka.

There are no bars for us to visit in Brighton because they are anathema to the Russian manner of drinking. Pokhlebkin, perhaps the most passionate and erudite defender of vodka consumption in recorded history, notes that “the correct role of vodka at a table drink is to accompany and to highlight exclusively Russian national dishes. Above all, vodka is the appropriate drink with meat and meat-cereal dishes, with salty and sharp-tasting dishes, and with fish.” No less than the Italians or French, Russians treat drinking as part of a complete gastronomic experience, and divorcing the two would be unthinkable for anyone with a modicum of taste. But perhaps because our foods are less sensuous or readily appealing than Mediterranean cuisine ― sour cream is not so sexy, it turns out ― only the bottle lingers in the imagination.

It does take a measure of stamina to drink like a Russian, and I’ve given up long ago trying to keep pace with the natives. I remember an American friend’s incredulity as four middle-aged women complemented their lunch at Café Gina with a bottle of Smirnoff they treated more like a bottle of Poland Spring. Meanwhile, at a recent dinner at Café Glechik, an Ukrainian restaurant, 15 of us brownstone Brooklynites struggled to finish a mere two bottles of Tito’s Handmade Vodka (that we were drinking a vodka which, while excellent, was distilled in Texas, is worthy of its own discussion). There is no counting calories or drinks at the Russian table, a byproduct of those fatalistic times when a drinking buddy might simply disappear into the gears of the Soviet machine ― as millions did ― never to tip his glass again.

Today, the memory of the Soviet Union has faded for many, and the crème de la crème of Russian society is no longer the Marxist ideologue but oil-rich oligarchs who favor, among countless other indulgences, the Swiss resort Verbier where, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, “the cheapest champagne costs more than £100 a bottle [and] the most expensive is nearly £11,000,” while a measly mojito runs £50. Such is today’s Russia ― flashy, bombastic, aggressive ― and there are sure to be legions of students, as there were during the Cold War, eager to once again understand a nation Churchill famously branded “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” My suggestion is a plate of veal dumplings under the striated shadows of the subway tracks, washed down by a Baltika beer. Just don’t forget the sour cream.

MIA is my hero

2009-02-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

I know that this is three day old news, but she's so awesome.

new walker evans?

2009-02-12T06:34:00.000-08:00

Besides giving me an excuse not to get a job, i'm hoping that the maximalist photoshopping era will end and photographers will return to 5x5' dark rooms in their basements. Bring contrast back!

beautiful...

ryan adams <3 mandy moore

2009-02-12T06:27:00.000-08:00

sweet.

2009-02-11T06:00:00.000-08:00

If Lily Allen worries she'll never marry, where does that leave the rest of us? Although I think, as does one of my classmates, that Ms. Allen is playing up the domestic, I get some sort of satisfaction out of knowing that she's as worried about this as many girls I know these days. Maybe it was too many Sex in the City episodes, instilling us with the fear that if we don't marry by 32 we're sealed to a fate of loneliness, neurosis, and consumerism. These days I find girls who say that having a family and marrying young are just as important as having a career smart and refreshing. It's not naive to think one can have both, but naive for one to think they can have one but not the other.
The worry that if one does not marry young they will never marry was really big in the 1970s in the Soviet Union. One of the things I am researching right now is student marriages. Many couples married in college. For women, it was understood that if they did not marry in college there would be no men left afterward. A woman I interviewed on Monday said that she married her first husband in college. Of her cohort of 12 classmates, there were two sets of married couples. Her sister did not marry in college, and she never married. The high percentage of married students put additional stress on the shortage-plagued housing supply. A number of newspaper articles chronicle the plight of married couples living in university dorms.
Anyway, cheers to Lily Allen for hating when people are late.

Radio Silence

2009-02-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Saturday night Alex and I went to the opening for the radio silence photo exhibit at the fourth wall project. A photographer wanted to take our photos. Unfortunately, we were not dressed our best, but wearing our spending the day at Widener library clothes. Besides my jeans, all the clothing I'm wearing I got in high school. Nevertheless, I think they came out ok.

bath time

2009-02-09T06:47:00.001-08:00

soviet women's magazine

2009-02-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

i spent the weekend at the library trying to wade through thousands of pages of the soviet women's magazine, rabotnitsi, for my thesis. i scanned all of the pages from 1970-74 that were about weddings, love, divorce, and related topics as well as pages about the middle east conflict (who knew that soviet women workers were so interested in the israeli occupation of the palestinian territories? see: "imperialism, the enemy of children.") i also found some articles about pets in the soviet union, and one about a couple which saves some crucially adorable sables. i'm enjoying the magazine very much, but am not looking forward to being finished. the next step in my research is to plow though soviet bibliographic reference books of journal articles to find some less obvious publications.

quantum of sweet potatoes

2008-11-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

tonight, we treated ourselves to an evening out at the theater. quantum of solace is the second best james bond film i have seen yet (i've seen one, casino royale. we watched it saturday morning). the female characters were actually quite strong in this one. i liked all of the luxurious scenes, any scene where daniel craig wears a tux, alex liked the scene where the guy from swept away had a philosophical conversation about socialism with his lady friend. and by socialism i mean tanning. somehow i guessed that would be his favorite scene anyway.
after the movie we also treated ourselves to a taxi home (it's SO cold) and made a delightful meal-- left over pesto, grilled grated sweet potato with butter and sage sauce, and avocado with lemon. it was fantastic.