Chocolate or Sour Cream?

When I first came to Russia, I was repulsed by all of the sour cream ("smetana") that Russians ate. I would stand in line at a cafeteria for soup and before I could move my bowl out of the way, a lady would plop a huge spoolful of sour cream into it. I then spent the rest of lunch time spooning around the blob, hoping it wouldn't rupture into the rest of my soup. Russians love their sour cream, and I think that I'm slowly becoming one... because I LOVE sour cream now!! We both love sour cream! The other night during dinner, Leif and I had a discussion over which food item we'd give up if we had to choose: chocolate or sour cream. And we both decided that we'd rather have sour cream than chocolate. Don't get me wrong, chocolate is wonderful. But sour cream can make an ordinary dish extraordinary, where as chocolate stands alone.

We buy these bags of sour cream and go through about one a week. Each bag holds about 2 cups. Notice how "20%" is written on the bag. This is the fat content. In Russia, people consider a food item to be better if it has more fat in it. This gives a person energy. So instead of labels like "nonfat" or "less than 1% fat", we see labels where the good yogurt is labeled 12% (Mmmmm.... the best!) and sour cream 20%. People think we're crazy because we buy the 1.8% milk (the lowest fat content in milk at our local store) when we can afford the 5% variety. Speaking of milk, it's packaged in boxes on shelves at room temperature. It must be safe because we are still alive. The yogurt is at room temperature, too. And eggs. And pig heads. And a lot of things.