What does Russian Breakfast consist of ?

Have you ever eaten the boiled sheep's head  for breakfast? No? And what about hot soup with noodles inside at 7 o’clock in the morning? In some countries they do. Usually when travelling, we have breakfasts in hotels. As a rule they are almost identical all over the world.  But what do people really eat at home?

I will tell you about my country. To tell the truth, first I wanted to write about our day meals in general. Using Facebook I asked my friends to help me, and got hundreds of answers, so decided to divide my post into several parts.

So, Russian Breakfast!

During our lives “breakfast-rules” differ. When you are a child you just have no chance to avoid it – parents watch you fixedly. When you are a student or have your first job, it is normal to come home late at night, so you have no time in the morning to eat at all. Maybe coffee and a cigarette. When you grow older and smarter you begin to think about what you eat, and breakfast becomes the main and an essential part of your daily meal times.

Most of my friends told me that they eat eggs in the morning. We boil them lightly or hard , fry with tomatoes in summer and make an omelet with everything we found in the fridge.

The second most popular breakfast is a kind of curd or cottage cheese. We have a special term for it – “ tvorog”. We eat it usually with something. One can add minced dill or parsley with salt. Others like it sweet – so add honey or condensed milk. The latter is from our childhood, it is very noxious because it has a huge quantity of sugar in it, but we can eat it even by spoons direct from the cans.

The last picture was send to me from France by my schoolfellow Yana. She wrote me that it is the only equivalent to our Russian "Tvorog" that she found.

In Russia there is a great variety of milk-products. Most of them we buy only for breakfast. I guess it might be hard to find even the equivalent in other countries. The most widespread is a “kefir”. It is a kind of thick milk or clubber with adding of different germs and microbes. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it is very healthy!

Then follows my favorite – “buterbrod” ( Butterbrot – in German). A piece of bread with butter and whatever you have at home: Russian boiled sausage, pate (I cook it myself), cheese, honey, jam, cucumber with tomatoes, red caviar and so on… In contrast to the European sandwich, Russian “butrdbod”  is an open sandwich and has only one side of the bread covered with filling. We have one famous cartoon-personage - a cat, who says that the only right way of eating “buterbrod” is “sausage on the tongue” (or upside down) – it’s much tastier!

Other things are pretty difficult to explain. We usually eat them on weekends, when we have time to cook in the morning, or we order them in cafés. I guess the most clear will be– pancakes (“blini”) , then follow small pies made from the “tvorog” (“sirniki”)  and the lastly ones are “oladii”. I tried to find this word in the dictionary, but it is written also as pancakes, but they are completely different, both in shape and in ingredients.

 Sirniki

Oladii

Oladii

And the last thing is porridge. Not many people like it because they were obliged to eat it in their childhood – at home and in a kindergarten. But the only one everybody eats for sure and groans with anguish while living abroad is buckwheat ( “grechka”). It is a grain which we boil and then mix with fried mushrooms and onion. Ohhh…yummy!!!