One of the great pleasures--or pitfalls--of travel is the opportunity to try another culture's food. Russian food is often disparaged, but I love it when it's done well. Fortunately, my host family is great at cooking and has the right philosophy about food. Local foods and natural foods are a big trend right now in the US, but local food is and has long been a way of life in Russia. A lot of the food my host family prepares comes from their garden in my host dad's village where his parents still live. There they grow potatoes and other fruits and vegetables and raise chickens. The milk we drink comes straight and unpasteurized from this village. I helped them make pelmeni--a meat-filled dumpling that is a staple of Russian cuisine--from scratch, whereas even most Russians just buy them frozen from the store.

All these fresh ingredients and effort make a huge difference. Food just tastes better when it hasn't been doused with chemicals and trucked halfway across the world, and those were the best pelmeni I've ever had. Russians love to point out that their food is natural and without chemicals, and it shows: We get a new loaf of bread every day because the bread here grows mold almost overnight. That makes me nervous about what was in the loaves of bread that I've kept in my pantry in the US for two weeks without them growing anything.

So what do I typically eat in a day? For breakfast, I usually eat a bowl of some kind of oatmeal (kasha is the name for it here, and Russians are serious about it). Lately, my host mom has been making a basic, pretty American-style oatmeal, but tomorrow she said she'll make sago, which is a very starchy oatmeal that comes from potatoes and corn and is rarely eaten outside villages. With my oatmeal, I usually have a few buterbroads, which are one-bread sandwiches with sausage and cheese. We occasionally have eggs as well. After knocking back a cup of coffee, I'm out the door.

Lunch lately has consisted of going to the supermarket near the American Home and buying some sausage, cheese, milk, and a half loaf of black bread (the bread costs 12 rubles--37 cents) to make some more buterbroads, but once I get settled, I'm planning on going to the main market in town and getting ingredients to make more substantial lunches, which I will keep as leftovers in the fridge at the American Home. That's what the Russian staff does.

Dinner always starts with soup. My host mom makes a big pot of soup each week. So far I've had borshch (which is actually not a Russian soup--it's Ukrainian) and a good chicken and potato soup. Then we have some meat-and-potatoes dish and a salad. In Russia, salads aren't at all like what we have in America. They almost never have any lettuce in them and generally consist of tomatoes, cucumbers, or beets. After dinner, we have tea and some sort of cookies or other sweets.

One last note about food. My host family makes their own salo, which is something that I had only ever heard stories about. And let me tell you, the stories were not good. You see, salo is some kind of solidified, seasoned pure animal fat (I think it might be pork fat, but I'm not sure). Other Americans on past trips have had horror stories of slimy lard. I, however, have a strange fondness for the stuff. Maybe it's just the way my host dad makes it, but it is fatty deliciousness. How to eat it? Cut a piece off the block and pair it with a piece of black bread. You'll feel you inner peasant in no time. Here is a picture of the wonderful stuff: