Yukino's Kitchen

candy wrappers and socialism.

2011-06-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

In post-Soviet countries a traditional children's New Year's gift is a colourful package of assorted candy. I'm not a kid, but I get these gifts. :P

Sugar is the only thing that sustained me through exams.

And this is the last 2009 batch of photographs. Soon I'll start posting 2010, and then 2011, and then we'll see what I'll do with this blog. Maybe I'll leave it up as an archive, or maybe I'll continue posting food photographs without recipes here, and start posting recipes at my personal blog.

We'll see.

fried eggs with onion.

2011-06-28T10:05:00.001-07:00

chocolate.

2011-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

My father received these small chocolates with watches & jewellery names as a gift from one of the shops he's a client at. Naturally, ~~I took them from him~~ he gave them to me.

cake.

2011-06-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

Tiramisu impostor. Still tasty. Bought and eaten for New Year's.

greasy monstrosity.

2011-06-28T09:37:00.001-07:00

can i count this as a fruit portion, too?

2011-06-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

This beauty is store-bought, but hand-made.

home, bar, bar, home.

2011-06-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

A quick breakfast at home. Open sandwiches and a glass of juice.

Continued with a cappuccino at the bar place.

Cooking a chicken stew at work.

Dinner after work. Looks huge and is huge. I was ravenous after not eating the whole day.

breakfast on blue.

2011-06-28T09:23:00.000-07:00

I admit, this is one of my most favourite photos, ever. It has to be the busy blue background. It's a breakfast for two, except for the coffee. My cousin's computer died two days before she was due to give her final thesis draft. All information was lost, so she crammed like crazy, and finished the whole thing in my place in two nights. I kept her company doing my last minute uni things. Gave us both a headache, thus the pills present on the plate.

leftovers for breakfast.

2011-06-28T09:08:00.001-07:00

Eggs and yesterday's pelmeni.

eggs, toast.

2011-06-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

Eggs is one of my favourite foods. I'm beginning my slow transition into veganism. These will be hard to give up.

duck eggs, greens.

2011-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

Actually, maybe goose eggs. I'm not an expert on anything that's not chicken, sadly. A village neighbour gave us coloured eggs for Easter, a common tradition where I live. She keeps ducks, so I think they're duck eggs.

fish, pasta, cake.

2011-05-30T04:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if I take pictures of food to remind myself not to take anything for granted. See, year 2009 (and the years prior, and after, but I think 2009 was the hardest, because it was a new level of adjustment) was quite a roller-coaster, financially. My mum's and my bar was slowly going under, mother got a bad case of hypertension and had to stop working for a while (after which we closed the bar completely). I had to drop out of the university so I could help her run the thing. Most days, the only food I'd see would be the food I'd serve. I went back to eating meat, because, ironically, at that time it was cheaper. First, there were lunches that we didn't get to sell to clients. We'd take these left-overs home to eat to share with grandmother and brother, but nearly everything had meat in it, and when it didn't, it simply didn't have enough protein, and we couldn't afford to even buy an additional can of beans.

So there were days where I'd score half a pound of fish of questionable quality on sale and be delighted, because the only things that'd be in the fridge were a tomato and some margarine, two soda bottles filled with tap water, and some preserves. Which is still a lot. I'd share the fish with cats, because we'd switch to the cheapest catfood, and God alone knows what they put in there, but definitely not enough vitamins and minerals. And then there were days where all I'd have is empty pasta for dinner and a tea with orange for lunch. And then, two days later, a ritzy breakfast of cake and oatmeal. I can't remember where the cake came from, probably a left-over from a party at the hotel my parents operate.

So yes, I take these pictures to remind myself that there are bad days and there are good days, but sometimes bad days aren't as bad as we think. No matter how little, but I've always had some food to photograph. This means something.

eggs & sausage.

2011-05-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

at the bar yet again.

2011-05-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

Beef burgers, mashed potatoes, and white rice.

bar lunch.

2011-05-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

This was one of the lunches cooked at the bar I used to work at. Salad, soup, and a second dish -- in this case, buckwheat and beef goulash. The cup of tea is mine, everything else had been served to the clientele right after I snapped photos.

coffee and candy.

2011-05-30T03:48:00.000-07:00

plastic fantastic.

2011-03-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

What is this alien substance?!

It's toast cheese over sausage. :P

baked thingy with coffee.

2011-03-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

My old camera gives all of my late evening photos, especially those taken in the bigger kitchen, this yellow tone. Which, as you can see, I have troubles correcting. It's buns, if you're wondering. And they're neither burnt brown nor ... violet purple?..

preparing for breakfast.

2011-03-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

Cooking rice porridge/ pudding for next day's breakfast.

My mum buttering cookies. Butter butter, cookies cookies.

two suppers.

2011-03-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

Buttered bread and cheese.

Potato soup and bread.

COOKIES.

And coffee.

a russian breakfast.

2011-03-18T04:23:00.000-07:00

And half a year later I'm finally resuming posts to this blog. As I've written previously, I still have a couple of photos from 2009 left to post, and then we'll be on to 2010, which is by now way over. I'm slow! I hope to one day have this blog updated regularly with things I eat and cook, but for now it will have to be sporadic.

The blog still lives, though!

Tea with milk, buttered bread with cheese, and buckwheat with milk.

This was actually a rather typical breakfast for me and my family, until the prices for buckwheat went up like crazy some time last year. Now it's more of a delicacy. Buckwheat. A staple on many an Eastern European table.

Cheese, of course, is a fancy item too these days.

But as it's not a state of economy blog, I'll try to limit these notes in the future.

I am not affiliated with the brand whose logo is visible on the mug. They have no idea who I am. I simply collect tea paraphernalia.

rest of 2008.

2010-08-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Took a surprisingly small amount of photos in 2008 and, I suspect, 2009 too. So soon we'll be almost caught up with years past, and then there'll be a few posts on 2010, and then I shall, with hope, keep this little blog o' mine current.

But enough of my ramble.

Look at that! It's a pie! A cinnamon apple sugary pie of doom, to be exact.

Mmm. It was good. And I'm not actually a fan of pies -- *GASP* -- especially as a dessert. They're too heavy of a food for the poor little old me.

I wish I had a recipe of this one.

Alackaday.

My charming breakfast. That white blob is zefir. It's um... a bit like a marshmallow.

An edible bracelet...

... a mobile phone picture of my Brother's favourite store-bought cake...

... and we shall ring the 2008 out with this oddly coloured mandarin orange.

I still wonder.

some things bring memories i'd rather not have.

2010-08-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

There was cake on that orange plate. Once.

Farmer's market.

Farmer's market cntd.

One day Cousin and I were stuck doing an epic amount of survey processing to meet a deadline. We usually cook, but were too strapped for time to do it on that day. Barely made it until closing time, by the way. Thank God Cousin has a pizzeria right in her building.

I was the first one to get there because Cousin had a late impromptu meeting with a client. As I ordered coffee for both of us, I entertained myself endlessly with taking pictures of it.

After the arrival.

We ended up ordering a four cheeses pizza. I think Cousin was unimpressed with the veggie option, and we didn't have money nor the stomach space to order two types. So we compromised and went with this one.

Which was OK, but one of the stronger cheeses overpowered the other three. So really, it tasted more like a one cheese pizza with a tomato.

Still good, though. I mean, come on, cheese on a crust. I'm not a purist or anything.

Coffee and pizza were had at Andy's Pizza.

cereal for late lunch.

2010-08-29T06:53:00.000-07:00

More like supper, if I am to go by time stamp.

The mug says Tomato Soup and has all the ingredients needed to make one listed on it. I bought it when I was in the UK more than a decade ago. I used to drink my morning coffee from it. Later on I gave the mug to my Cousin. She uses it to make me tea.

IS IT A HAND?! Indeed, my Cousin's. I think we ate like half of the cereal by just crunching on it whilst waiting for the milk to boil. Cousin insists on using warm (actually, hot) milk in cereal, making this sort of mush porridge type thing.

When the milk was in, we were too busy eating.

probably my favourite berry.

2010-08-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

Not necessary to use all the four pictures I took of them, but, as I said, they're probably my favourite berry. And I only had them once this year. So I'm reminiscing.