Russian Cuisine or Disappearing Family Traditions

While I was cooking a red cabbage salad today, I all of a sudden remembered our family tradition. 

We would buy two or three cabbage heads and my mom would  thinly chop it all (I am so glad I have a chopper in my kitchen now as I am making the cabbage salad), grate some carrots, and then my dad's part would kick-in - which, to me, was a performance. Removing half of the tablecloth from the table, he would put all the chopped cabbage on the bare table, add salt, and start mixing and pressing and squeezing and juicing the cabbage with his hands. I enjoyed watching the cabbage giving juice, getting soft in my dad's strong hands. I was three. I admired his strength, gnawing at the cabbage stem.

And then my mom would bring a huge clay pot, all the cabbage would be put there, covered with a plate and a jar of water to keep the pressure on the cabbage - to squeeze even more juice. The pot would be put on the floor next to the radiator - to improve and accelerate fermentation.



I still remember the atmosphere - yellow light of the lamp above the table, winter darkness outside the window, and my whole family, working together, making sure it's perfect - anticipating the outcome... And the best part came a few days later, getting the first portion of the coleslaw, mixing it with oil, fresh onions, adding a bit of sugar and... cranberries to add that explosion of taste just as your tongue was getting used to all the sugar... Colorful and very, very tasty.

Another way to spend a long winter night indoors, was by making perogies. My mom would make the dough and the stuffing - usually, made of meat, and then the whole family sits down together around the table, cutting out pieces of dough with their thin-edge drinking glasses, filling the pieces of dough with stuffing, closing and curling it just so.

I was always very generous with the filling, so my perogies were very hard to close, let along curl. So that started the tradition of "guess whose piece of perogi I got in my plate" game. Of course, mine were easy to spot - they were either huge or empty, their filling having escaped while boiling...

I love these memories :)

What family traditions do you have - or did you have, growing up?