When East Meets West

Have you ever seen someone pour cooking oil on top of his morning oatmeal, followed by ground flax seed, then a big dollop of butter?  How about slathering a thick layer of full-fat sour cream on top of bread, then adding thick slices of swiss or cheddar cheese?  Or brown sugar in tea?  What about piling mayonnaise over everything from sirloin steak to cooked broccoli?  Maybe ketchup on egg noodles?  No?  Do you want to?  If so, come to my house!  My live-in Russian friends--my son-in-law's parents--are a veritable cornucopia of odd eating habits, all the while thinking they are eating "healthy".

Sergei has been treated for high blood pressure for years.  He always declares, "NO SALT" for foods that we prepare, yet he pours soy sauce on stir fry, and eats cheese and cold cuts like you wouldn't believe.  All very high in sodium.  (Translate: salt.)  Both he and his wife, Luda, have been diagnosed with high cholesterol and blood fats and were told, "No more mayonnaise or foods high in dairy fat" by American doctors.  Yet they brought home whole milk last week, ice cream, full-fat sour cream, full-fat cottage cheese,  mayo, cream cheese, other hard cheeses, ad infinitum.  After my initial lecture about how much fat they were eating, I decided to save my breath.  Yes, I understand that low-fat foods don't taste as good as the Real McCoy, but they are better than nothing...and better than the heart attack that is to come.

I think the Russians--and I noticed this with my son-in-law--put sauces on foods to cover up the taste of lower cuts of meat in their native country.  This morning, after several days of high-fat meals, the R's decided to have "diet food".  Sergei thawed boneless, skinless chicken breasts to cook on the grill for dinner.  That's a good start, I thought.  And then he concocted one of his own special marinades that those low-fat breasts have been soaking in all day.  I guarantee there is mayonnaise in there somewhere and who knows what else?  He totally negated the relatively fat-free nature of the chicken with his marinades.  Unless it is swimming in oil/fat (which some of the meals have been), I will eat it.  I just can't seem to get through that what they are eating just isn't good for them!

There are other Old World habits that aren't so bad.  The R's won't wear their street shoes in the house.  I've tried to explain that only households with new carpets or young children remove their shoes in the US, but apparently it's what they do in Russia, so I'm not against that.

Also, they have street clothes and house clothes.  What they wear outside the house is different from what they wear inside, and never the twain shall meet!  I'll bet they change clothes at least three times a day.  Going to the store?  Outside clothes.  Come back?  Change to inside clothes.  Walk in the park or trip to the Rec Center?  Street clothes.  Home again?  House clothes.  I would be exhausted...but I do understand that, some.  When I was a child, we had school clothes and play clothes...and church clothes.  Today's American society has blended all three to the point that people generally get dressed in the morning and stay in the same clothes all day, due to the convenience of better laundry machines, etc.

The Russians and I are getting along fine.  I am so very grateful for all of their work on my behalf.  I feel like I should teach them how to play euchre or something useful to do when they get to Florida, but I don't know how to do that with only three of us in the house.  Heh heh...I noticed Sergei correcting Luda's English today.  I've got her reading some science books of my grandson's.  Today she was reading about thunderstorms.  Her pronunciation is awful, but she is comprehending what she reads, so that's good.  They spend an hour or two every day on the computer studying Rosetta Stone English.  We just keep on keeping on!