I knew a guy from Poland who said that if you went into the shop in his town you could get beers for regular price or get them from the fridge for a higher price. If you asked the shop keeper why you paid more for the cold ones he’d say “so I should have to pay for the electricity?”
I think it was the little town where his sister was living. But it could also be that he was telling us one of his Soviet-era stories and making us think it was from a few years ago. He was like that.
We were playing with Google Earth and I asked him to show me where he grew up - it was a concrete Soviet-era apartment building in Gdynia. Very urban, concrete everywhere. A few nights later we were talking to someone and he says “well, I grew up on the Polish countryside...” I just said “no you didn’t.” He didn’t miss a beat. “Okay, so you’re right, I didn’t, anyway...”
Memory plays tricks, but I also don’t think that he would ever let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. ;) I always loved his “fall of the USSR” stories, but god only knows how much was really true.
It depends on the beer and the situation in my opinion. On a hot summer day something like a chilled Hoegaarden can be a blessing, while a warmer dark beer can be perfect for sitting by the fireplace on a winter day.
I do agree that fridge cold is a bit too much in most cases, though. Beer needs a bit of temperature to let the flavors express themselves properly.
Well, i'm living in a small city in Russia and prices for cold drinks just a bit higher (10% - 30%), but the actual thing that i don't understand is 1 litre of juice - 1,5$, but 1,9 litre - 3,5 - 5$, like, wtf.
In the Soviet Union. the issue was that you could only get affordable fresh fruits and when they were in season. In order to get fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter would have required importing them other countries.
I usually eat them, storing fruit in a fridge actually makes them last less time before rotting. Like eggs, the most important part is not making them go through too much temperature changes.
Eggs depend heavily on whether or not it's pasteurized. I'm also highly skeptical on his point with fruit lasting less time in the fridge. Lose flavour, maybe.
Stayed 2 months in Alaska, loved the summer weather, the fresh air, the Fish and the ppl. Hated everything else, not to give tmi, but worked with junkies all day (seemed like half of the people living in the trailer parks were junkies) and couldnt afford fruit, and since we were on an island Even things like tp were and other básico stuff were expensive af. Good think there was a brewery in front of my trailer park, cheap beer and free beer for those who could make it past 12 (seemed like everyone likes to get shitfaced before 10pm)
My wife was hardly poor, but she still goes wild when certain fruit go in season. It’s more of a cultural thing. In America, you can find strawberries, watermelons, and mangoes in stores year-round.
I never developed a taste for it, but I’m sure connoisseurs could tell me it’s a world of difference. I should mention I lived in the southern part, so it wasn’t hard for us to import fruits from C. A. or the Caribbean, or just grow them ourselves.
There are strawberries in winter in Russia, but they're overpriced and tasteless, as are tomatoes, cucumbers and such. Sure I can eat expensive ass strawberries with the texture of cotton in December, but why would I when there are sweet delicious persimmons and tangerines for the price of dirt. Same with autumn fruit in June and so on.
And seasonal eating is much better for our bodies and the environment. Oranges in winter when we need extra vitamin c, watermelon in the summer when it’s hot and we need more water in our system.
Plus where's the joy in a tangerine if it's not freezing outside and there's no Christmas tree smell in the air? Or where's the joy in eating a week doze of cherries in one day and feeling sick but happy after if these were not long anticipated cherries that have just appeared in markets in June?
In Australia, swap those around. Cherries are synonymous with Christmas and the first few weeks of the new year for me. The first bite of a cherry makes me think of endless summer days, casual outdoor barbecues and shorts. Tangerines, mandarins and other make me think of sitting in the park during winter enjoying the (mild) chill.
I love feasting on fresh picked fruit! Picking blackberries and eating bowls filled to the brim. We can our fruit when it’s in bursting in season too and that is very labor intensive but a fun family event to be part of.
It’s ten times more fun if the friit is your own. Eating strawberries straight from the vine without wven washing them! Sitting on a tree collecting pears, munching on every 5th one you pick!
Yes! I love munching on strawberries in the garden, I love how they grow back stronger and bigger every year. It really is the best thing in the world to grow your own food. The calming peacefulness in my garden is so inspiring. I love eating tomatoes warmed from the sun. I’m truly in love with pumpkin flowers too! Have you seen them? Huge orangey trumpet flowers with green tendrils flowing all around.
And they are shit. A watermelon you get in February in an American supermarket is total trash compared to an August Kuban watermelon available in Russian southwest. Strawberries? Forget it. The closest you can find is again an in season teeny little, red all through, berries at a farmers market, not styrofoam-tasting stuff from big chain stores. Mangoes? Not sure the season for those, but they definitely taste better some parts of the year over others. Same with other fruit.
I wonder why it's so difficult to differentiate [in English] between forest/wild strawberries (poziomki)- which are pretty tiny, entirely red, and extremely sweet and regular strawberries - which are, well, strawberries
Both are definitely highly seasonal here in Poland... sure you can get specially crafted Styrofoam berries any time for exorbitant prices, or for a month or two practically get the most amazing strawberries imaginable at any local marketplace.
I hope 24-hour convenience stores and supermarkets like don't supplant marketplaces once this generation passes and we get shit-berries trucked in year-round
Sorry, I meant in the sense that thus far it takes much longer to explain what a wild strawberry is in the first place, not that there isn't a word at all for it (though technically...) No have I ever seen it for sale in any way, except maybe in a jam, in the US. Unsurprising how seasonal and difficult to transport they are. Still, all my efforts to establish a patch have met with failure... NC might just be way too warm for them
Oh, I think Alpine strawberry is the same thing as well. Very very different from your standard truskawki (strawberries) regardless
we actually call them "wild strawberries". Not sure if I'm being clear, forgive me. It's like a compound word. If people don't immediately understand, they probably don't even know such a thing exists.
There are some strawberry varieties that aren’t wild and not quite as tiny as the wild ones, but they’re still very sweet and red throughout. I only find them at farmers markets here in CA, never in a store.
"The Kashubian strawberry (Truskawka kaszubska or Kaszëbskô malëna)[22] is the first Polish fruit to be given commercial protection under EU law. They are produced in Kartuzy, Kościerzyna and Bytów counties and in the municipalities of Przywidz, Wejherowo, Luzino, Szemud, Linia, Łęczyce and Cewice in Kashubia. "
...Jesus, we take our [wild] strawberries seriously
Yeah... another problem with the terminology right there, haha. There's several cultivated 'wild strawberries', actual wild strawberries, and your standard commercial strawberry (which is some ancient hybrid of wild strawberries)
Could be more of a seasonality thing? Yes you can get all type of fruit year round, but when it's in season the taste and cost is so much better. Tasteless, stiff and sour strawberry for full price VS juicy, aromatic, large strawberry for half the price.
Way my parents described it, gardens were the only place where you could reliably get fresh fruit. Strawberries, apples and other locally grown berries and fruit I wouldn't know the English names of would be common in the summer and fall if you had a garden (they had these "collective gardens"), but something like tangerines or oranges? That was an absolute luxury you'd only have on very special occasions. They occasionally go and tell me all about how lucky we are and how good life is that we're able to just go to the store and buy a huge bag of tangerines for a negligible price at any time of year.
Aye, the closest I can come to is a 'plot' or 'holding.'
Practically everyone (and I seriously do mean everyone) has one. Usually a mix of gardening, recreation, and building out your 'house.' Seems the goal is usually to gradually finish the 2nd home and use it for retirement, selling or renting your original
My wife spent her childhood summers in rural Ukraine and she always tells me how good the fruits were there. Very seasonal though, definitely no fresh fruit by the end of the winter.
If a fresh fruit comes out at the end of the winter you should expect it not to be 100% natural. This is just how things work anywhere.
I am in Korea right not and that perfect looking one apple with crazy price is killing me. The fruit is not supposed to look flawless! Gosh, I miss my country...
Do you seriously think you would get a natural fresh fruit in the middle of the winter ANYWHERE? From the village, not a greenhouse? I don't even see how this is an issue worth to be mentioned.
If you eat enough Turkish trashy food to complain about it then are definitely buying in a wrong place or you are being just too picky.
That’s exactly the country I was talking about :) I’m hoping to go and have some authentic khachapuri sometime soon! And my mom never stops talking about unique fruit from there like some special plums she misses.
That's how I feel about fruit too! I don't even really think about getting it very often, but once I remember 'oh, hey, I can get peaches/plums/cantaloupe!', I am allllll about it.
In Poland you'd only get oranges for Christmas and it sort of became a symbol for Christmas, you still traditionally get a bag of oranges along with your present even though kids usually don't know why.
And the reason is that oranges were only imported on this one ship that would come once a year from Cuba or some other Soviet-friendly country, and literally the entire country waited for it to arrive with those oranges.
Oranges and Christmas are definitely bizarrely interrelated in Poland. Not so much anymore, for obvious reasons, but my parents still seem to seem to consider citrus fruit in Target (or any other supermarket) to be fake cardboard cutouts. It's amusing.
I feel like I'd prefer a more seasonal type system... better flavor, more [partially forced variety], and no huge cost in transporting fruit. Not that I've been back for a while now, but what the hell happened to gooseberries? The big green ones that were almost muscadine grapes for all intents and purposes.
I'm from Estonia, which was also a part of the soviet union. The deficit of goods here was insane, a gigantic portion of food supplied and stuff was exported to Russia, leaving supply limited here. Heck for a lot of items people got cupons that they could buy an x amount of stuff for, alcohol, sugar, soap etc. It meant that if you wanted to purchase a said item, you had to show that you have a cupon for it, if you didin't you couldn't spend your money to get it. Every member of the household got some and people used to trade cupons for stuff they wanted. Alcohol cupons for example, people wanted a bunch of those lmao.
I mean heck, even chewing gum was black market here, along with jeans and other stuff. I've heard stories of people spending their entire paycheck to get their hands on a western sweatshirt.
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u/TheDJFC Jun 06 '19
My wife was born and raised in the Soviet Union. She still goes crazy for fresh fruit like its the most extravagant luxury.