December 03, 2024

Herring Without a Fur Coat?


Herring Without a Fur Coat?
Herring under a fur coat, a timeless Russian holiday delicacy.  Pannet, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Rising sunflower oil prices in Russia have led to a rise in prices on 21 popular brands of mayonnaise, a Russian holiday staple.

Individual brands predict upticks in cost between 2.9 and 15 percent. According to one official, the wholesale cost of sunflower oil, the primary ingredient in most mayo, has risen 40 percent in the past year. This price increase comes right before New Year's, Russia's biggest and most popular and holiday. Mayo plays a crucial role in many staple holiday dishes

Other household ingredients including milk, butter, and tomato paste have also seen price increases in the past year.

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The Life Stories collection is a nice introduction to contemporary Russian fiction: many of the 19 authors featured here have won major Russian literary prizes and/or become bestsellers. These are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination, masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today. The selections reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book are going to benefit Russian hospice—not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

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Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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