I caught sight of a publication about products that, it turns out, Soviet citizens had never seen before. And if they did, it was a glimpse. True, some lucky ones had the chance to smell these products, with special efforts - to lick them.
I could not pass by, although most of my adult life was lived after the collapse of the USSR, but ...
It so happened that I remember what was sold in stores and what ended up on our table. And so I want to say - these are the stories about the starving Soviet people, for whom letting children smell a chocolate wrapper on holidays is a lie
Yes, at the very end of the country's existence, the products mysteriously evaporated... and then, no less mysteriously, I decided to return. How? I don't want to argue and speculate about this. Today about products that allegedly were not in the USSR.
Chocolate
Shta? In my childhood chocolates "Alenka", "Tales of Pushkin", chocolate bars "Babaevskie", chocolate hares from that manufacturer were not at all uncommon. This I listed what I remembered offhand. I simply did not consider it necessary to remember the name of the chocolates. I am silent about the wonderful assorted sweets. And about a bunch of other names of chocolates.
By the way, there were sweet tiles, yes. They were called that - sweet (or confectionery) bar, cost several times cheaper than chocolates. If memory serves - twenty kopecks. Nobody passed them off for chocolate, no need to lie.
Seafood
What are you talking about... I remember that even during the end of the country called the USSR, sad squid carcasses lay in white enameled trays in the fish departments of grocery stores. Why they were not taken, and why there were a lot of them, is a mystery to me. Ocean pasta, krill meat, crabs - periodically appeared on our table. Yes, not often. When we went to the sea - often.
But my acquaintances who lived with their parents in the Far East are now complaining that they were fed seafood to the best of my ability and I don’t want to. If the author of the slander wrote that there were problems with potatoes in the Far East, it would be true - the ugly potatoes grew there, due to the proximity to the sea. But the seiner was brought in a bunch of yummy.
There were no oysters, call me!
By the way, there is such a dependence with seafood around the world: the closer to the sea, the more of them and they are more affordable. I have not seen cheap seafood in the regions remote from the Okyan seas and in the progressive countries of the West.
Normal cheese
I am tempted to write: but in America there is still no normal cottage cheese! Although this will not be true, as in the case of the assertion that there was no normal cheese in the USSR. In America, there is cottage cheese, it's just different. In the USSR, cheese was, and, by the way, normal, tasty - and Poshekhonsky, and Russian, and Dutch, and even varieties were made with mold.
Camembert with parmesan is not released - again, call me. But here's the trick - Camembert, Parmesan, and almost all kinds of cheeses that gourmets love to mention so much have a very long history and are tied, most often, to a certain area. That is, they are all part of the culinary culture of this or that people (living in that area). Cooking cheeses in Russia, if my memory serves me, began under Peter the Great, it was done by invited cheese makers. And, by the way, they cooked normal cheese. And then, and under the USSR.
Since there are a lot of beeches, I will add a sequel tomorrow.
By the way, which of the following did you "not eat" in the USSR?