Russian pancakes recipes

Maslenitsa is here already, so let's prepare at home some traditional Russian pancakes!

How I do them!

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• pinch of salt
• 110 gr. of flour
• 200 ml of milk
• 75 ml. of water
• 2 table spoons of butter

  

        

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and the salt. Sift the flour into the bowl, and stir in along with the milk and the water. Add the butter too. Mix until smooth and well blended. The batter should be thin.
2. Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat. Lightly butter the pan. Remember the Russian pancakes you only fry on butter! It's a butter week, no?. Tilt the pan to spread the batter out evenly. Then you can start pooring the "dough". Wait until the edges of your "blin" are crisp looking and the center appears dry, slide a spatula carefully under the crepe. Flip, and cook for about few seconds on the other side, or until lightly browned.
3. Remove your "blini" to a plate. Put a little butter on top, (butter never spoils the taste) and continue to stack the pancakes on top of each other. To serve, spread with desired filling, then fold in half, and in half again to form a triangle or you can just roll them actually, creating a small tube.

Possible fillings:

Could be anything, really...cheese and ham (People who are doing the Easter Fasting during the Butter week cannot eat meat), fried mushrooms and onions, smoked salmon (my favorite one), the sweet alternative could be lemon juice with a bit of sugar or honey....mmmm!! I like all of them!!

Butter Week, Pancake week, or Cheesefare Week!

Масленица (Maslenitsa)

(28/02 - 6/03 - 2011)

Cheese, or a carnival week is a preparatory week of the Fasting in the Christian society. It is dedicated to one purpose - reconciliation with others, forgiveness of injuries and the preparation for repentance towards the God. Butter week is a colloquial name of the last week before Fasting. During this time is prohibited to eat meat, but you can eat fish and dairy products. During this week you are free from the one day fasting, that you normally do every week on Wednesday and Friday.

In Russia, Maslenitsa was always a joyous celebration. In Ukraine for example was nothing like this, people have different traditions and well, we have to respect them. But even without any type of the celebration when I hear the word "maslenitsa" I already smell the pancakes, imagine a river of a melted butter, feel the taste of the salty smoked salmon wrapped in the warm crepes.

It is widely believed that the russian "carnival" week is a celebration rather pagan, and not Orthodox, but It's not quite true.

This preparatory week before the Fasting is like I have already mentioned dedicated to one purpose - reconciliation with others, so it is the time when you need to devote good communication with the neighbors, relatives and friends. 

The Church of course calls to remember that at no time people should have fun, which leads to conscience loss.

The prayer during the Fasting period, unfortunately cannot be translated: 

"Господи и Владыко живота моего, дух праздности, уныния, любоначалия и празднословия не даждь ми! Дух же целомудрия, смиренномудрия, терпения и любве даруй ми, рабу твоему. Ей, Господи Царю, дай ми зрети моя прегрешения и не осуждати брата моего, яко благословен еси вовеки веков. Аминь".

Source: GotovimDoma

Photo source: TheVoiceofRussia

Putin supports the leopard for the Olympics

According to the voting results, the official mascots of the Olympic Games 2014 in Sochi would be: Leopard, Polar Bear and the Hare. Leopard received 28% of the vote (!!), the White Bear - 18% and the Hare - 16%. Mascots of the Paralympic Games in Sochi would be Fiery boy and Snowflake. 


Famous athletes and Paralympians Alexander Alyabyev, Vladimir Kiselev, Margarita Koptilova, Ksenia Ovsyannikova and Igor Pustovit affirmed "Our chosen characters are fantastic creatures that resemble humans, have adapted among the humans, so people would perceive them as equals. They are fantastic characters, but apart from this, they have unlimited possibilities, like we do."

The remaining symbols, that won less points at the voting were: the  fourth place - Dolphin (12%), the fifth place - Bullfinch (10%), the sixth place - the Sun (8%), the seventh place - Matryoshkas (the Russian Dolls) (5%), the eighth place - Brown Bear (3%).


President of the Organizing Committee of Sochi 2014, Dmitry Chernyshenko gave his final decision on the choice of the three mascots: "People say - God loves a trinity." Therefore, he decided to leave the three winners of the "race". Each of them would be confirmed as the 3 Olympic principles - friendship,respect and motivation to be the best."


Previously expressed his support for the Leopard mascot Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. According to him, it would be particularly symbolic, as the leopard species have been restored in the Caucasus after being destroyed in 50 years. Leopard is a strong, powerful, fast and beautiful. Leopard breed has been traced out in the Caucasus, but now has been revived, "- he said at the meeting with representatives of the student organizations of Sochi, answering a question about the most likeable supposed talisman of the Olympics. Russian Prime Minister highlighted that the choice of the mascot will be based on the opinion of the majority and would not be based neither on his, nor the Mr. Medvedev's opinion. "

                                Sochi paralympics: Fiery boy and a Snowflake

Photo sources: SportSegodnya, Allnewspoint

Article source: vesti.ru

"Russo turisto, obliko morale!" - "Russian tourists do not have morals!"

...says the phrase of a famous russian movie. 43 years passed since the movie "The Diamond Arm", that mentiones the quote was filmed, but did we russian tourists actually changed?

Not everyone, unfortunately. This I can say because sooo many times there are situations that I am embarrassed to say: "I'm one of yours!"

For example, reading my favorite website www.snob.ru  I found something that shocked me!

While Dmitri Medvedev had a meeting in Brussels with the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, Svetlana Medvedeva, his wife was getting around the Bruges.

 - Svetlana Medvedeva was late for a meeting with the Governor of Bruges for two hours without even warning anybody beforehand. People that were accompanying her, said that she needed rest.
- She booked a table for 20 people at a Michelin three-starred restaurant Karmeliet, but never appeared there and didn't cancel the order either. Instead she came to Duc do Bourgogne and, according to the staff of the place, was changing the order several times, after the cooks were already starting to prepare it!

- Insisted on buying a eighteenth century's lace, which was decoration of the museum shop, and wasn't even for sale!
- Visited the museum of chocolate, accompanied by twenty bodyguards!

Since then the Belgians call her: "De grootste lastpost in jaren" - the biggest nuisance in years!!

When the local mayor congratulated her on Russia's successful bid to host the 2018 World Cup, she reportedly upset him by baldly stating: "The winner takes all." Belgium mounted a joint bid with the Netherlands to host the competition and was one of the countries that lost out to Russia. She also hit the headlines last month after a leaked US cable published by WikiLeaks claimed that she was causing tension inside the Russian government and had blacklisted officials who she thought should be made to "suffer" in their careers because they were disloyal to her husband. (telegraph.co.uk)

on the 1st photo: Dmitri Medvedev and his wife Svetlana
2nd photo: Svetlana Medvedeva
Photo source: allboatsavenue, telegraph/uk
Source: snob, telegraph.co.uk

Vila Zelina - a piece of Russian culture lost in the stone jungle

On Sunday I went to Vila Zelina, a Eastern European neigbourhood in the Eastern part of Sao Paulo and I loved it! You can easily get there by metro, it's on the green line, same as Vila Madalena at the veeery end. The name of the station is Vila Prudente.

A big Ortodox Church where I met a father Georgiy, a biological father of Vladimir Petrenko, the priest from a nice and cozy church in Moema. There is also bakery that sells a real Russian black bread, some small off-licence stores selling salty and smoked hering "selyodka" and pickled cucumbers - "solyenye ogurtsy"! And a language school Yazigi which offers a Russian language course!I have met some really nice people, all of them speak very good Russian, especially the priest Georgiy! OMG, It seemed like he just got of the Transaero direct flight from Moscow!

The neighbourhood has it's own Russian association, which includes a folcloric band, a travel agency to Eastern European countries, a football team, a theatre group and a chorale!! It also has it's own small magazine called "Comunidade russa" and a website of the neighbourhood: http://www.portaldavilazelina.com.br

The area has some Catholic Churches too (one of them is Lithuanian) and there is even one Ukrainian Autocefalous, not counting other 2 Autocefalous churches in a different city - São Caetano, which is situated in 10 km. from the Vila Zelina. 

The neighbourhood is growing, changing and willing to be better day to day! "We want to have traditional events organized here in Vila every 2 month! And we do not want to swap our neighbourhood for another one. Here are our roots, our culture, here is the spot that has been created by the hands of our grandparents and parents, here we have the opportunity to invest in our culture! It's the only thing we have got as a heritage from the post-Soviet society." - says Viktor Gers, the citizen of the Russian world in the "Paulista" capital.

  
Sources of the photos: CoisadoAudrey
                                 Amoviza 
                                 DouglasNascimento

About the Berlusconi's protest post

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

32% of Russians believe that Sun revolves around the Earth!

The sun revolves around the Earth? Apparently in Russia it really does!

One third of the population rejects the idea of a system of planets revolving around the Sun, and it's 4% more (what happened?!) than in 2007, when a similar study was done by the Russian Research Center of Public Opinion.

The survey highlighted the scientific superstitions of the Russians and a few days later the President Dmitri Medvedev had supported the investments in space programs to explore the moon and distant points of the universe. (Yesss, finally!!)

The survey also reveals that 55% Russians believe that radioactivity is a human invention (wow!), while 29% say that humans actually coexisted with dinosaurs. (this one beats all the records!)

The numbers also indicate that women are more likely to believe in superstitions than men. (personal message to my Brazilian husband: I TOLD U that my paranoia was cultural!!)

The research took place in January 2011 and involved 1,600 people from the different regions of Russia. (that's a lot of people I tell ya!)

Source: Folha

Femen against Berlusconi

"Italy isn't a bordel!" - say the girls revealing their panties during the yesterday's protest at Italian embassy in Kiev, Ukraine.

Photos by  James S. Southers

Source:DEMOTIX

Photos by Sergei Supinsky

Source: RussianForum

The stylish politician

Yulia Tymoshenko - The Ex-Prime Minister of Ukraine 

I really like Yulia's style, but the only advice I would give to her: "Yulya, use the national brands, keep the ukrainian designers on the top of the fashion world! No need to promote Louis Vuitton, we are not in France! We have so many talented people in our country and they also want to have their chance in life!"