I love going to cafes, eating ice cream and drinking soda water. It stings in the nose and tears appear in my eyes.
V. Dragunsky. What I love and what I don’t like!
History and documents. The last time our story about "sweets" in the era of the USSR ended in 1962, the year when I went to first grade. By this time, both grandfather and grandmother had already been retired for two years, and various ailments fell upon them. Lord, how many times, while my mother was at work, and she often worked with parties until 10 pm, in any weather I had to run to the next street to the fire station to call an ambulance! And quite often it happened … food poisoning! Either we had “not very cleanliness”, or it was about the products, but the same sausage was constantly poisoned by my grandmother. And it often turned out that my mother was in Moscow, my grandmother was in the hospital, but I had to feed myself and my grandfather. And even after the maternal culinary delights in the form of pancakes with jam, milk croutons and lushly whipped omelet.
Everything was in the refrigerator, but how to do it? I fried my first eggs in first grade. First on one side, then on the other. Then … then I cooked soup, made the first mashed potato in my life, and then from the book "Schoolchildren's Nutrition" and an impressive mushroom salad in the form of a mushroom from a stuffed egg: a leg and halves of a tomato with white dots from mayonnaise. Then, using the same book, I learned how to make a "bull's eye", beat and bake an omelet, fried eggs. In a word, I have mastered a fairly decent set of dishes. The adults appreciated all this, when the grandfathers' brother (who lived behind the wall), Uncle Volodya died, and everyone left to bury him, out of stupidity of mind not taking care of dinner. And it was November, snow, cold … So for their arrival I cooked a stew with meat, seasoned with dry wine (I read this recipe in the book), and for the second - a pot of mashed potatoes with boiled sausage slices! They arrive already in a dark, angry, hungry way, and now they have dinner … It is still pleasant to remember their surprised faces.
And so it went. In my mother's absence, I often began to cook myself, invented various complex sandwiches to read Mine Reed in bed at night, which, of course, was impossible. And everyone was happy that their "baby" was gaining weight by leaps and bounds, and instead of putting me on a diet, it was forbidden to eat sandwiches with boiled pork and mayonnaise at night, and to drink kefir! In a word, if it hadn’t gotten married on time and if my wife (not without difficulty, of course!) Had not accustomed me to proper nutrition, then I would not have seen health at all. In her family with this, thank God, things were better than mine.
But let's get back to the food itself, or rather, to the "snacks".
There weren't as many of them as now, but they were delicious. First of all, for example, I really liked the rum grandmas. Some were smaller and looked like ice cream cones, while others were large, blurry. There were more Roma in these, but the small ones were rather dry. There were three types of pastries: eclairs - they were called "custard" in the USSR, biscuit with cream roses and a potato cake. Cream - only butter, very tasty. There are also two cakes - biscuit and fruit with fruit drenched in jelly. The first one in Penza cost 1 r. 20 kopecks, the second - 1 ruble, and I often "earned" this ruble in different ways, bought it myself when I wanted something sweet. I was somehow always indifferent to sweets. My comrades down the street were very fond of colorful candy balls. They were called "Dunkina's joy", and they never bought them from us. There were toffee "Tuzik" sticking to the teeth, "Hematogen for children", a lot of all kinds of caramel candies with filling, as well as colorful candies in boxes. But "lemon wedges" (marmalade), just like the "Bird's milk" cake, could be bought only in Moscow, and then having defended a considerable queue. In Penza, such cakes appeared only after 1993. There were chocolate bars with very tasty and delicate fillings, but Rot-Front chocolates were sold literally on every corner. Truffle sweets were very tasty - they were larger than today's ones, and … rather expensive. Sets of chocolate bottles with liquor inside were very rarely on sale, but there were …
I didn't really like the round little raisin cupcakes, which are still baked today in exactly the same conical tins with profiled walls as then. But I really liked the large "brick" muffins, stuffed with raisins to capacity. Large and nutty, with nuts inside, but they didn't seem so tasty to me.
We never bought preserves and jams in cans. Grandmother welded on his whole basins. It was kept in a closet in large pots and jugs and was so sugar-coated that it could be cut with a knife. They took care of only raspberry - it was given to the sick along with tea to sweat.
Only in 1968 did my playmates from Proletarskaya Street finally overtake me in terms of the welfare of their families. Their parents received apartments, their salaries were raised to 330 rubles. Plus, they also began to pay the 13th, so they threw their stoves and kerosene stove far away, and in the old house we continued to cook in the summer on kerosene gas until 1976, when our house was finally demolished.
In the same year, my mother received a Ph. D. in history, we went on vacation to Bulgaria. The way we were fed there made an indelible impression on me. I was especially impressed by the pastries there. For 14 days of stay, they gave the same only twice! And there was also plenty of dry wine "Byalo Blame". A liter for four for lunch and dinner. Two strange girls were sitting with us at the table, and they were always ashamed of something, including drinking this wine. Well, my mother and I drank this bottle for two, and they, poor fellows, were left with mineral water!
With wine as a child, I was … very lucky. Guests and relatives came to us quite often, well, from the age of 7 they poured a glass of port for me. And then I somehow got sick with measles, as always, very hard, and our old street doctor, who lived next door and in the past a former zemstvo doctor, came to me - still with a listening tube! "If measles is treated, it lasts 14 days," he said, "and if not treated, but well looked after, then two weeks." But so that the rash does not pour out on the internal organs, you need to give Cahors - half a glass in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening. And I began to drink Cahors and perfectly endured this measles. And then, at the age of 14, I had chickenpox, and they smeared me with brilliant green and iodine alternately and, again on his advice, they gave me Cahors to drink, but a glass at a time. So the store even decided that "the Taratynovs' grandfather started drinking!"
By 1968, a wonderful household restaurant - the Golden Cockerel tavern, and sweets with the same name, and branded vodka appeared in Penza. The Snezhok cafe was opened in a house on the main street of Moskovskaya, where ice cream was served in balls in vases: with jam, raisins and cognac. And in 1973 the Bar "Bochka" was built in the form of a huge barrel, where, in addition to beer, there were eclairs with salted cream. We, students of Penza universities, were ready to stand in any queue just to get there. And it was the height of elegance and extravagance to bring your girlfriend there too.
It's just that I stopped visiting my comrades' kitchens then … In general, the period from 1968 to 1972 for myself I call "the era of mango juice." Then, in all Penza grocery stores, rows of metal liter cans of mango juice with a very catchy blue-yellow label appeared. There were red labels, but the juice was thinner."Blue-label" jars contained thick, aromatic and very tasty juice, and cost 1 r. 20 kopecks We liked it very much, and we began to drink it regularly, by a glass after dinner. They carried it to the hospital every day, when I fell ill once again - now with pneumonia. "Lafa" continued until 1972, when the flow of cans (and they came from India) for some reason suddenly dried up.
There were some products, but, let's say, they were not very popular. For example, I personally really liked black olives, but it was not always possible to buy them in Penza, and even then it was possible only in the Don store in the very center of the city, that is, far from my house. In all my youth, cauliflower was brought to a grocery store near my house only once. In general, "food" at that time was extremely seasonal in nature. In the spring - everyone has a 10-12 kopeck bunch of radishes. Then she's not there at all. So is the strawberry. Not earlier, not later … Cucumbers and tomatoes, like watermelons and melons - all in season. At first, people cannot gorge themselves on cucumbers, then no one looks at them - they only salt them. The situation is just like in the novel The Humpbacked Bear by Yevgeny Permyak, where it was about the first decade of the twentieth century. While reading it, I drew attention to the similarity of life situations, to speech patterns, but what does this mean? Only that such a similarity took place even 50 and 60 years later. That is, the development of social consciousness proceeded slowly. And there was no question of growing something out of season, in greenhouses.
Or, for example, cheese. It was bought for a holiday, beautifully cut and laid out on a plate and served to guests. Then … then in the refrigerator it dried up, covered with drops of oil. They did not eat it regularly, there was no such tradition. Again, I really liked the Roquefort cheese, which I first tasted in Moscow in 1972. But they did not sell it in Penza. I had to ask my friends to buy it at the Cheese store on Gorky Street. Once two of my comrades were almost kicked out of the compartment, when they were driving him, he smelled, and when we looked at it, it turned out that he was covered in mold and that “you guys were deceived …” It's good that they were smart enough to remember that the person they are taking him to is "a great original", and that "they read somewhere that there is such cheese and that they eat it!" But when even the cheese began to be given only a pound each, this rule did not apply to Roquefort, and I bought half a head at once to the envy of the whole line.
In general, the conclusion will be this: in the USSR there was almost everything that is now, well, a smaller assortment. But, as is the case with information, part of this "everything" was in one place, and people in another. That is, it turned out that you yourself were partly to blame, that you didn’t have something: “I didn’t get it.” In general, the food was seasonal, it was difficult to buy vegetables and fruits out of season. The quality … was probably better overall. But those who assert that "the people are being poisoned today" are also wrong. Don't take the pickled one … By the way, the sausages were pink inside even then, but they were not pink at all from meat. But the products of private bakeries, cheese-making, meat products of farms today are not inferior to the products of that time, and, if possible, the range is superior. And, of course, the dacha. What was grown in dachas then and now is two completely incomparable differences …
It also belonged to my great-grandfather. I know from my grandfather that they pounded sugar in it then, which they bought with "heads" (with cones!), Smashed it with a hammer, wrapped it in linen, and pricked small pieces from the sugar bowl with special tweezers (I saw them in my childhood - just a godsend for an executioner!) pieces. But if crushed sugar was needed (it was called that way, and by no means sand!), Then it was in this mortar that they pounded it. And coffee beans were pounded in it too. But now it is used for its intended purpose: as it is written in the book "On tasty and healthy food", almonds are pounded in it.
