why do i agree to do this stuff? / русский базар

A few weeks ago, Stuart came home saying he’d promised we’d set up a Russian stall for the Christmas fayre at our local church, which had an ‘international’ theme this year. So he got to be the one yesterday to go to the Sputnik shop in Lewisham to pick up various odds and ends, and I dug out my enormous Russian festival dress. (I once fit six people inside it.)

Neither of us are Russian, but the fake Women’s Institute had already taken the English table and I didn’t really feel like doing an American table. (It’s much more fun to parody a culture that isn’t one’s own, I say…) Our table featured Russian gingerbread biscuits, a sort of traditional Russian cola called kvass (which is much nicer than benchilada says it is), assorted chocolates from the Red October factory in Moscow, and black caviar on bread.

Not everyone was dead keen on the caviar.