My Second Problem in Russia: Foods

Okay, my first problem to live here is the weather. I have no other option, I need to deal with it, and enjoy it, special thanks for the God of Snow. Moreover, the second problem for me is.... food. I'm not saying that I hate Russian foods, I do like them, for example Borsch (the red soup), I feel like I am a Dracula when I eat this soup, second one is Blinneuy, it's really nice pancake too. I also was in Festival of Tatarians, they served some traditional foods, I tried some, and yeah I like them, they are tasty.

So, why does it become a problem? And the answer is simply because I am an Indonesian. Let me explain, our foods are different in so many ways with Russian foods. First, our mainly food is rice, and here are bread, potato, or grechki (I hate this one). In Indonesia, at least I eat rice three times a day; morning, afternoon, and night, and when I miss it, the worms inside my stomach will create a Great War and do demonstration, they force me to find rice, and it hurts. You can ask Indonesians about how they think about rice, some people will answer like even they eat 5 times in a day, but without rice, they will say that they do not eat yet. A funny fact is, we can eat anything with rice, even I have friends who eat spaghetti with rice. I also can eat rice only with salt.

Second, Indonesian foods use a lot of spicies! In Russia, they use less of spicies, or maybe only salt. It's normal for us to put chili, onion, garlic, pepper, and more. We also use a lot of vegetables, even just to make it looks better. In the last new year, we cooked an Indonesian food for our Russian friend, for us it taste normal, but when he tried it, suddenly he shouted "Do you want to kill mee????" he felt that it was very spicy lol.

Several months ago, we participated in an event called "Gastronomic Day", it was great, we decided to cook our national foods named "Tumpeng" or The Yellow Rice. Some people from Russia was surprised because it looks so nice but complicated. And some asked us, why we use so many spicies, we didnt know the answer actually, it just like how we are.

Tumpeng that we cooked

It is simple if I compare to other Tumpeng in Indonesia

I wanna cry :((

Third, the fruits and vegetables. If we talk about the quality, of course the fruits and vegetables from tropical area are better. We are solucky that we have a good weather and land, it makes the fruits and vegetables better. In Russia, usually you can find apple, pear, orange, watermelon, they are quite normal (the price too). In some place we also can find fruits like pineapple or coconut... but.. but.. they are so strange for me. Very small but so expensive, and the taste is ewwwwhh, I will never try to drink water from coconut again here, terrible! The coconut size is only as big as my hand fist, and the water taste like a salty soy sauce!!! Also pineapple, I saw a very small one, and the price is about 200 Rubles, with this price I can get about 3-5 big pineapples in Indonesia.

Here the other photos of fruits I've found in Russian. This small coconut costs 95 rubles. In Indonesia we can get 2 coconuts as big as your head, at least. And the water inside it is so fresh and can recharge your energy. Another one is avodado, it is my favorite favorite fruit, but to be honest, I dont have any desire to buy it here.

One day I decided to buy tomato juice in a restaurant. You know what, this is one of the worst decision I ever made here! I imagined the taste of the tomato juice in Indonesia. Sweet~ Fresh~ but... all I got is just a tomato ketchup in a glass. It was salty and spicy. Damn. And this is not only in restaurant, when you buy tomato juice in a cup or box in the market, I suggest you to stop it.

Forth, in my country, we have dozens of streer foods, morning, day, or night. If I am hungry, I just go outside and maybe after 10 minutes I can find a lot of kind of foods in the street, like fried rice, noodle, satay, pancake, and many more, and they are cheap! But here if I am hungry I need to go to the restaurant, cafe, or canteen, it's not really expensive but still the Indonesian street foods are cheaper and glut. Also, if I go to the fast-food cafe like McDonalds or KFC, i will never find rice, I should go to Asian Restaurant. Here, when we want sauce, we need to pay extra cash, but in Indonesia you usually can get as many sauce as you want.

Now, I already adapted with this condition. There were days that I really didn't eat rice at all. Sometimes I just eat with bread. And another thing I can't deal with that is when Russian eat some salty foods like soup, and they put a smetana (like a sweet and sour cream). inside. Ewwwhh. But at least it is a good experience for me, on the other side I can practice and improve my cooking skill.

Here i get some pictures from google: