Borsht: it's not just for hipsters and babushkas!

Guess what I did today?

Fill a large pot about halfway with water. Put in about two good spoonfuls of vegan-friendly chicken flavored stock substance.

Chop up a bunch of root vegetables (and cabbage), mostly the kind that made you say "EWWWW!" as a kid.

Put the beets and ONLY the beets in the vegan friendly chicken flavored stock substance. Stew till the beets lose their purpley-ness.

Do a bunch of other stuff that I didn't feel like photographing :-P

Enjoy what is, in my opinion, the world's most beautiful soup. 

Oh yes...Russian food is ORGASMIC on a frigid Pacific Northwest night.

Yes, Readers, the writer of this blog is a Babushka in the making (although I DO NOT plan on becoming fat and jovial until I have at least three grandchildren).

I hate to blow my own trumpet, but I am a good cook. My repertoire is small, however, and I have a talent for burning things in my pre-historic oven with the broken temperature gauge.

As much as I love cooking, I haven't been doing much of it lately. This is mainly because my apartment, while awesome, has the world's tiniest kitchen. I don't have room for a microwave. I don't even have room for a toaster!

A TOASTER!

So, when I DO cook, it had better be something effing special.

I used to make a similar borscht to this on a daily basis while I was working at Pike's Place market. Back then, the owners of the cafe I worked at had borscht down to a science. Even though the work space there was, if it can be believed, TINIER than the kitchen I have now, I was able to whip up a batch of this stuff in about twenty minutes.

This one, because I kept on having to stop, clean dishes that I needed, stop again, peel the carrots because I forgot, stop AGAIN, run to the corner store and pick up the vinegar that I needed for the finishing touch...took me the better part of two hours.

But DAY-UM, it was WORTH IT!

Borscht gets a bad rap. I'm ashamed to admit it, (even though I have a strong Russian heritage), but I was quite...shall I say...biased in my opinion before I started making it myself.

This is probably because the borscht I knew so well was the cold, canned stuff you find in the "ethnic food" aisle next to the gefilte fish and udon noodles.

I also, sadly, have to admit that my first experience even hearing the word "borscht" was from watching the Rugrats when I was a kid. And lemme tell you, the makers of that cartoon had something against borscht.

*hangs my head in shame*

On that note, readers, I leave you with the glory that is Russian soup.

<3