Madeleines made with . . . Organic Egg Whites??

Sorry to all you gourmands out there—the title of this post has nothing to do with a creative dish I’ve tried recently in an over-priced but delicious four-star restaurant. It’s just an attempt at a metaphor about the confluence of my life with RUSSIA’S . . .

. . . because, see, everything has been so new for the both of us lately. I’m into my third week here, and yet I can’t seem to stop wanting to move, change jobs, find more expensive purchases (painful example from this week: White Acacia honey from Bashkirian beekeeper: $8), and see random British men lying in the fetal position when I open the door to my apartment. That’s right, all of the above took place u menya (“to me/for me/at my place”—and it really can mean all those things) in the past five or so days, just as Moscow was celebrating its 860^th birthday, bitterly welcoming autumn, and finding itself smitten with the taste of cage-free organic eggs. Yes, shame on you, all you disbelievers out there—even a back-asswards country like Russia can boast those brown-shelled taste bombs that Californians have been eating since the 60s. And, somehow, it gets better: their brand-name is “Happy Chicken”!! How great is that.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that all this change somehow reminds me of the past . . . that chill, 7-a.m. breeze that hits me as I walk out of my apartment building is eerily similar to one that hit me two years ago; I could swear that I saw the same Bashkirian vendor at the All-Russian Honey Festival of 2005 (that’s right, second time I’ve gone!); and, even though I was at some extremely strange battle-reenactment in the svezhii vozdukh that day long ago, I’m pretty sure I noticed Moscow turn 858 while I was in country. With Happy Chickens running rampant now, are Muskovites just years away from drinkable tap water and ovens with temperature gauges? Or are the $500 cellphones and ubiquitous fur coats signs that these things have no order? Did I actually come back to Moscow . . . ? Or did I just eat a light, fluffy madeleine (without preservatives—very Russian)? Considering that I might soon work for a newspaper, live in a single room and share a bathroom, and still can’t really afford that prikol’niy (coooooool) designer coat in the window—let’s just say I feel right at home ;-)