I Lava Beets and Other Roots.

This week I had the absolute pleasure of taking four foreign exchange high school students on a trip to Sacramento to go check out the state capitol and learn a bit more about democracy in action.  As always happens in these situations I ended up taking away more from the experience that I thought I would.

This particular cluster of kids happened to be all Russian-speaking, hailing from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.  They had heard that Sac has a huge Russian community, so we made part of our trip a search for a taste of home.  This search led us to Stolichniy in North Highlands where we shared a Russian meal.  I went in thinking I'd have no clue what to eat, but as I looked over the menu I recognized several foods that come straight out of my family's cookbook.  I even know how to make Vareniki.  See, we're Volga German and I had always just assumed all of these delicious foods that we have at family gatherings were from the German side of things.  Of course, I never factored in the Russian influence on our plate. So I enjoyed the familiar- Piroshki, Vareniki and Blini- but tried Borscht for the first time as well as Vinaigrette salad.

Oh my flipping goodness.  I never knew how much I love beets.  Seriously.  Majorly.  Madly.

Of course, the things at this restaurant weren't all vegan and I just kinda ignored that to enjoy the experience, but I decided that I'd do what I could to vegan-up a few of the things when I got home.

Enter magenta-stained hands, a purple-splattered kitchen and a delightfully filled belly.

I found this great blog- Natasha's Kitchen, a treasure trove of Russian and Ukrainian yummies.  For the Vinaigrette salad I didn't have to do any work to make it vegan- it's all veggies.  But for the Borscht I switched out the chicken bouillon with veggie bouillon and plopped a dollop of Tofutti cream cheese on top instead of the tradition sour cream.


I love that everything is pink.  This fits in with my cute manifesto well. 

Here are the recipes for Vinaigrette and Borscht, Make them, LAVA them.

Some photos of my finished product:

Vinaigrette. Beets, Potato, Pickles, Sauerkraut, Carrots, Onion.

Borscht. Beets, Potato, Carrots, Onion, Cabbage, White Beans, LAVA.

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

Purple fingers!  LOVE IT!

The most important part of making soup- sharing it with others.  I'll be making a few deliveries tonight!

My amazing students Kristina- Russia, Daulet- Kazakhstan, Julia- Ukraine, Anastasia-Russia.  They're silly and smart and I love them to pieces.