Out Of Bounds silliness.

[icarus]

Hello, random friendslist!

I'm poking at the next scene in the figure skating AU, Out Of Bounds. It's progress, but my boredom is showing.

I feel a need for randomness.

Why yes, I'm well aware you are all adepts of the random. *nods* I have read my friendslist after all.

So tell me... *Icarus laces her fingers together and leans her chin on them*

... what would you like to see in Out Of Bounds? Probable or not. Predictable or not. More of something. Something that's only been hinted at.

I do not promise to include it, but the last person who threw the random at me got a unicorn. :D


ETA: Can someone explain the LSD-blue sky in all the drug ads?

Comments

[mad_maudlin]

Can I request a non-flashback appearance by Radek? And if that's already in your outline, can I add a request for vicious slurs agains Slavic food? Or at least a mention of borscht?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

He's definitely in the outline for non-flashback appearances (plural).

*gets out notebook*

Do please tell me of the disgusting nature of Slavic food.

[mad_maudlin]

Well, okay, it's not disgusting. I'm actually fond of piroshki, which are little fried hot pockets usually filled with either cabbage or mashed potatoes. Because how can you go wrong with carbs wrapped in other carbs and then fried?

But the main problems with Russian food (or basically all local food that I've encountered here) is that it's 1. greasy 2. bland and 3. basically meat, oil and carbs. No veg, unless they're drowning in mayonaise/sour cream (that's a "salat" over here). They make spaghetti with nothing but oil as dressing--sunflower oil, not olive. When vegetables do appear, it's usually the winter-hardly root vegetables--onions, carrots, beets. (I can't count potatoes here because they're all carb.) Tomatoes and cucumbers are popular seasonally, but again, typically appear drowning in mayonaise/oil and salt.

And dill. Did I mention the dill? I think I've eaten more dill in the past nine months than any other time in my life.

The one exception to the vegetable rule is borscht (which is technically Ukrainian--its Russian equivalent is shchi). This is a vegetable soup, beet-based (shchi is cabbage-based) sometimes with chunks of meat added. But it's just as bland and dilly as any other dish. The worst bowl of borscht I ever had was blood-red from beets, contained a few limp carrots, and had an oil slick across the top from more-fat-than-meat beef that was boiled in it.

The main seasoning in use are salt, dill, garlic, onion and mayonaise. Canned, processed fish packed in oil is insanely popular. The most common way of cooking is a shallow fry or boil. This means street food is tasty (=piroshki, cherbuki which are the meat-filled cousin of piroshki, vareniki which are Ukrainian piroshki, and samsa, which are Kazakh) but whole meals of the stuff get tiring. The desserts are good, though. They take their candy seriously over here.

Other dishes: pelmeni, which are like little meat ravioli; kotlet, which is actually mini-meatloaf or hamburger patty; golubtsi, which are stuffed cabbage roles; plov, which is a cousin of rice pilaf, only with lots of violently orange grease involved. (It's Central Asian in origin but findable in Russia.) The "garnir" or side dish to most of these would be rice, mashed potatoes, or oily spagetti. In restaurants, they will put a squirt of ketchup on your rice.

(I actually like most Russian food, but I do get tired of it, and plus, since I've been cooking for myself my skin has cleared up alarmingly. Plus plus, pumpkin manti rule, but manti are Central Asian, and Actual Russians (tm) wouldn't know a thing about them.)

(I've long believed that when canon!Rodney was in Siberia, he was insanely happy with the menu for about a week. Because it was fried food! Bland! In large protions! And they'd never heard of citrus anything! But after about a week he developed a twitch in the presence of mayonaise.)

DISCLAIMER: This is based on personal experience in Kazakhstan. I know nothing about food in Actual Russia (tm) and little about Eastern European cuisine elsewhere, except that Hungarians make a mean pot of paprikas czirke. If anyone else has had other food experience, please share--I'm curious, too!

[roaringmice.livejournal.com]

Some of the things I loved to eat in Poland, and which are also common in the Czech Republic, are the cakes - OMG, they are masters at pastry - and the potato pancakes with mushroom gravy.

Czechs (and Poles) do use a lot of dill in their foods, but I like it. I also like the cucumber salads - I make them myself. There's a version of that that isn't soaked in mayo, but instead uses what's really a very light vinegrette, which is Czech and Polish in origin, and very nice. But yes, with dill. :LOL: