Meal with Old Believers

We drove on a bit further and stopped at a house where we were going to have a meal with their traditional food.

A few ladies came out the front to greet us dressed in their traditional garb. They didn’t speak English so our guide translated for us. The main lady showed us round a house they had set up with furniture etc. They were very small
houses - I guess they were easier to keep warm.

Apparently the women would spend half of their fertility stage pregnant. They had a pretty hard life, as I guess most women did back then without all the modern conveniences of today. I’m so soft - I couldn’t imagine doing half the things they had to. The irons were so heavy i think I’d burn holes in the clothes, churning the milk to make butter for 3 hours, cooking with massive pots you had to pull out with a big hook, washing by hand with a scrub board...

Then we went to the room where they had a meal prepared. We shaped some pancakes with dough they had already prepared and they cooked them for us after which we sat down to eat. They had all sorts of different breads at the table - sweet and savoury with sesame seed dip, sour cream etc. We had a yummy soup to start called stchi or something, followed by meat with mashed potato and a sweet porridge which tasted like rice pudding to me - which the others strongly disagreed with. But I hold my opinion. I love rice pudding!

They also had some moonshine which had to be drunk at various intervals throughout the meal in one shot. I abstained of course - thankful I had the excuse that I was pregnant 😂 supposedly it was clean in that you wouldn’t have a hangover later.

There was another group that joined us for the meal as well and sat at a separate table. There was so much food we were all quite stuffed by the end!Read more