Globalism has enabled a blending of world cuisines, but each culture has its own unique take on every dish. The Chinese food we Americans devour en mass is not really the food people eat in China, and I have a feeling that most Italians would be deeply offended at the offering of dollar slices of pizza that get wolfed down by Ohio State's finest every weekend night on High Street (nothing like waking up at noon on Sunday with that why-did-I-think-a-whole-pepperoni-and-hot-sausage-with-garlic-sauce-pizza-was-a-good-idea feeling..oh college). Of course, Russia does its own adaptations of world cuisine. My friends and I made a pretty international dinner for ourselves last night: I made curry, and the other guys made pizza and pasta with meat sauce. It all turned out really well, and that was in spite of the fact that I used sour cream instead of plain yogurt in the curry.

The one thing that still perturbs me, though, is that Russia seems to not have heard of tomato sauce yet. When you make a pizza, for example, you don't grab a can of pizza sauce. No, instead you get yourself a bag of ketchup and squirt some on. It's the same deal with pasta. Yum. I've lived in Russia for a while now, but the idea of dousing my pasta in slimy ketchup is still unappetizing. But there aren't many other options. Whereas American grocery stores have the whole canned-tomato-stuff isle, Russian grocery stores have a big isle full of marginally different types of ketchup. So even making your own pasta sauce would be somewhat challenging, although I want to try it one day. Until then, I'll just keep on drowning my pasta in ketchup.