Nice things from home

[SFandEE]

I am interested to know from FSUW or the men they love what kind of material things from home they would like to have in the West or what they take to FSU from the West when they make a return visit?   Are there hard to find pleasures from FSU here in the West?  What are the hard to find pleasures in the FSU here in the West.  Please share.

[Vaughn]

I'm surprised that no one's responded to this until now, SFandEE.
 
It really depends on the relationship you have with the recipient.
 
In general, fine cosmetics and toiletries are (for many) prohibitively expensive and usually very welcome.
 
My brother-in-law really enjoys crunchy peanut butter - but that might be one of those now-available items, I'm not sure.
 
A coffee table illustrated book from your home state should also catch interest.
 
If he/she partakes, a nice higher grade bottle of bourbon or tequila. We usually bring a few of these to the folks back home.
 
When we became engaged, I brought along a homemade video to my future wife - just to give her a glimpse of my family, friends and environment - it sort of removed some of the mystery she faced.

[Gylden]

Grechka (buckwheat) and curtains
 

[Gator]

They miss kefir and that stinking fish, the really bad one that not even a Norseman would eat.   

[Misha]

My wife does not really miss all that much.


We make our own kefir.


When she is in Russia, she usually buys a facial scrub: http://www.viteria.ru/index.php?productID=952 and a few other lotions made by the same company.


She will usually buy a compilation of Russian music.

[OlgaH]

I usually bring some souvenirs and herbal teas. Regarding some food the Russian stores here in the US have pretty good choice.

[Spoon]

A true Kiwi or Aussie will never leave home without a jar of Vegemite.

Funnily enough I could never get my wife to sample something that to her, looked and (probably) smelled like axle grease!!

[GQBlues]

The top 3 things my wife wished she had taken plenty of when she first arrived were...
 
Brick-like bread, both in hardness and weight.
 
Vas (Yuck in English. To me it taste like soda without the carbonation and soy sauce added).
 
The medication made of charcoal, I don't remember the name. She said it's good when you feel you there's a bit of toxicity in your system. It's like 'filtering your insides. Be prepared to get shocked! I can't believe something this nasty can be good for you!
 
But now she's aware of where all of the Russian market/stores are including fresh-baked bread. Yum! She's a happy clam.

[Ranetka]

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?rlz=1T4SKPT_enGB429GB435&q=active+charcoal&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=10093371453893694718#
 
activated charcoal, sold in any farmacy here in the UK....

[Manny]

We always take black bread, marinade and honey back to the UK when we leave Estonia. I bought 3kg of honey on a local market yesterday for just that purpose.

I bring Encona hot chilli sauce to Estonia or Russia. Lovely on the shashlik, but not so easy to find in some places. The Russian palate is averse to very hot stuff generally, so there is little demand here for hot sauces.

[Steamer]

The things my wife MUST have are R/mayonnaise and R/mustard. Fortunately there's a R/market not too far away.

[Gator]

We always take black bread, marinade and honey back to the UK when we leave Estonia. I bought 3kg of honey on a local market yesterday for just that purpose.

Odd.  Please explain why.   Apis mellifera is an Apis mellifera in the UK or Russia.  Honey depends primarily on the flowering plant from which the nectar is gathered.  Usually the local vegetation is so diverse that honey is honey.  In the South we have periods when certain blooms predominate yielding small quantities with a special flavor in high demand (sourwood honey, tupelo honey). 

[vwrw]

From there to here, I bring herbal tea and a facial cream. Local analogs are more expensive. 

From here to there, I bring microwave popcorn, toothpaste , and some haircare products.  All these can be bought in Russia but quality differs.

I have never been to a Russian store here. If somebody put kefir or salty fish in front of me, I would help myself with pleasure, but I do not miss anything Russian so much to go shoping in a Russian store.

We do not follow any Russian tradition or observe any Russian celebration in our family.  Overall, I have integrated so well in American society that if not the struggle with language , I would feel like I was born here and the Russian past is just a dream that is presently half forgotten.

[OlgaH]

  Apis mellifera is an Apis mellifera in the UK or Russia. 

You just need to know where to buy and from who otherwise you can get a sugary surrogate.

I like Florida honey and particular from Struthers' Honey, Inc, I also get bee pollen from them when I have a chance to visit their store.

You should be very careful in Russia buying honey  especially from unknown you people. There are also several tips Russians use to check the honey quality.

Talking about Russian stores Robert likes salami, honey kvas and berry mors, I usually get a big jar of red caviar and Russian cottage cheese (tvorog).

For my relatives and friends I usually bring some presents from Marshalls (as I know their sizes), handbags, makeup, skincare, haircare and some other stuff.

[Misha]

Usually the local vegetation is so diverse that honey is honey.

It depends. I worked for a beekeeper to help pay my way through university. Bees will go to the nearest source. If they are next to a clover field in bloom, they will of course collect nectar mainly from the clover, while if it is a canola field they will go to the canola flowers. The honey will thus depend on what is nearby and also the time of the summer: i.e. what is blooming. As you can collect the honey several times in the summer, you will thus have different types of honey from the same hive in the same location.

[Manny]

We always take black bread, marinade and honey back to the UK when we leave Estonia. I bought 3kg of honey on a local market yesterday for just that purpose.

Odd.  Please explain why.   Apis mellifera is an Apis mellifera in the UK or Russia.  Honey depends primarily on the flowering plant from which the nectar is gathered.  Usually the local vegetation is so diverse that honey is honey.  In the South we have periods when certain blooms predominate yielding small quantities with a special flavor in high demand (sourwood honey, tupelo honey).

I dunno about the US, but in Europe, honey is markedly different from place to place. Vegetation differs markedly from place to place. The flowers in Estonia differ to what you will find in Spain or Italy for example. As does the honey. Supermarket blended honeys are usually quite bland or over sweet.

In our local Rimi supermarket here, they do an own brand honey that is so bad it even pollutes the taste of my coffee.

In Poland I buy acacia honey from the roadside sellers. That has its own taste. In Poland, they often have many types to choose from; each quite different.

In Estonia I used to get it from the father of a friend of mine who brought it in, in bulk, from Samara, Russia. It had a particular taste that I cannot define in words but only the Russian stuff from the Samara region tasted that way. It was this Samara honey that got me hooked on honey.

Yesterday, we were driving from home and there was a market on the village green (happens a lot in Estonia where the folk from the south and east come in and around Tallinn to sell their wares in summer). We stopped for a look. My wife, immediately identifying "proper" stuff, promptly started gleefully filling bags with gherkins, plums, tomatoes, black bread, some kind of dried long sausage, some iffy-looking smoked pork stuff and apples.

I spotted the honey. I zeroed in as it had the right colour and consistency of the stuff I missed from Russia (the hard, waxy stuff, the bright yellow stuff or old sugared-up stuff is no good - you want deep orange and very runny). The guy offered me a taste from a pot he had handy. It was bang on. It was the old stuff I loved so much.

That's why I bought three kilos. You can buy dozens of different types of honey in the UK, but seldom does it hold a torch to what I can buy here in the FSU.

To cut a long story short, honey is not all the same. No more than milk, eggs, teabags or steak is. Milk or eggs: Poland (like it tasted when you were a kid); Steak: South America or the Scottish Highlands (although I had some pretty good steak in FL they said came from CO); Honey: Russia (Estonia now - but it may be imported); Tea: England (coz we blend it to suit the regional water).

Food simply isn't the same everywhere (the US cannot do cheese for example; Brits cannot do pancakes, waffles or hash browns - one must eat those in the US). Honey is no different; it differs everywhere.

[OlgaH]

Yes, Misha, honey taste, flavor, density and color depends on bees sources.

[Gator]

Food simply isn't the same everywhere (the US cannot do cheese for example; Brits cannot do pancakes, waffles or hash browns). Honey is no different; it differs everywhere.

Agree, but the difference in dairy products is due to three key variables: 1)  people, 2) raw input (the cows in America were probably given hormones), and 3) technology (pasteurization seems different in Russia as American milk even chilled has a shorter shelf life than the cartons stored in Russia at room temperature).
 
Bees take people out of the equation (unless it is blended honey), the wild flowers (raw input) I saw in Russia seem similar to European flowering plants, and there is no technology. 
 
So I did some reading.  I was wrong.  there is some technology.  The mass produced honey sold in commercial food stores is pasteurized to kill yeast spores, and filtered to remove starter crystals.  That could explain the difference. Water content and sugar content are other natural variables. 
 
I buy honey from small producers.  Although not pasteurized, it lasts for years and years. 
 
The vegetation is also critical.  Besides wild flowers, the farm crops grown in Europe and Russia do flower, adding something to the mix of raw input.   
 
Most of the Florida honey comes from orange blossoms and is nothing special.  The tupelo tree region in northern Florida is superior.
 
 http://www.tupelohoney.org/
 
I consider tupelo good, but not as good as sourwood honey from Appalachia.  Sourwood trees bloom in the summer and the spring honey is first removed to assure high purity.
 
Discussion of best
http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/best-honey.html

[Manny]

We are holidaying in FL in November; I'll be sure to pick up some Tupelo and Sourwood if I can.

Thanks Gator.

the difference in dairy products is due to three key variables: 1)  people, 2) raw input (the cows in America were probably given hormones), and 3) technology (pasteurization seems different in Russia as American milk even chilled has a shorter shelf life than the cartons stored in Russia at room temperature).

We have to seek out what in the UK is called skimmed milk here. Here they call it 0,05% milk and hide it near the smetana away from the regular high fat milk that most people seem to buy. I know zero about what they do or don't do to it, but I do know that a glass left by the bed overnight is like yoghurt by morning. Yak.

[OlgaH]

Here is an interesting study on law fat milk

http://wss.nourishingconnections.org/Education/LOW%20fat%20milk%20causes%20weight%20gain.pdf

FATTENING PIGS FOR MARKET (They include skim milk too)
http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/14694/StationBulletin269.pdf?sequence=1

[OlgaH]

 
Most of the Florida honey comes from orange blossoms and is nothing special. 

It is subjective 

[The Natural]

Talking about honey, once we got some from my ex's uncle in Siberia and it was extremely tasty. Not pasteurized of course. I also get unpasteurized honey here and I can attest to the fact that it last for years and that different types taste different.
 
I brought with me to Crimea a few cans of mackerel in tomatoe sause and my girl and her mother like it very much. My experience with Russians is that they are fond of fish, which is a plus here I guess, as we have plenty of fresh fish.
 
Just a point about milk. Pasteurized milk is heated to about 72 celcius for about 15 seconds. It removes the enzymes which is no good for the health as enzymes are important for good digestion. The kind of milk that are stored in room temperature and seem to last forever, is ultra-pasteurized. It's heated at a much higher temperature for a few seconds and are totally sterile and must be the closest "food" to poison. They also do that to coffee cream. Personally I would never touch the stuff.

[ML]

If somebody put kefir or salty fish in front of me, I would help myself with pleasure, but I do not miss anything Russian so much to go shoping in a Russian store.

Some Giant Eagle stores now carry kefir.

[Gator]

Just a point about milk. Pasteurized milk is heated to about 72 celcius for about 15 seconds. It removes the enzymes which is no good for the health as enzymes are important for good digestion. The kind of milk that are stored in room temperature and seem to last forever, is ultra-pasteurized. It's heated at a much higher temperature for a few seconds and are totally sterile and must be the closest "food" to poison. They also do that to coffee cream. Personally I would never touch the stuff.

Good explanation; however, there must be something else happening based on the response of my ex-wife's two kids,
 
In Russia, they would drink voluminous amounts of the unrefrigerated Russian milk in cartons. 
 
In America,  they would drink little milk saying it had a bad taste.  However, they said the American organic milk was really good. 
 
I even did blind taste tests of organic milk vs. conventional milk from three different food chains.  They selected the organic sample 3 times in three tests.   
 
How goes the experience of other Russians now residing in America?

[Gator]

Some Giant Eagle stores now carry kefir.

If it is anything like that sold in Florida food chain stores, it fails the taste test of five Russians whom I know very well.