For Gilya, a 36-year-old accountant, and her husband, Nikolai, 44, a writer, the staging of a dinner party now takes a full month of planning. Recently the couple invited 10 friends over for a Sunday feast. Moscow correspondent Carroll Bogert shows what it took to put food and drink on the table:
The filling for these meat dumplings was meat bought on the sly at Gilya’s office cafeteria. Nonsmoking Nikolai traded cigarette ration coupons with out-of-town relatives for flour to make the dough.
Gilya doesn’t like the fatty product she can get through her job. She traded with a friend for leaner sausage.
Rationed at two bottles a person per month, but Soviets get more by trading in scarce empties.
Gilya bought apples from a hawker outside the subway. The mandarin oranges appeared unexpectedly at a state store.
Gilya got a sackful as payment for helping farmers rescue last fall’s rotting harvest.
A previous dinner guest brought them as a gift.
Gilya ordered the tomatoes (preserved and canned) from a weekly grocery list circulated at her office. The cucumbers came from the free market at more than twice the state price.
Included in a “sweet package’ available only four times a year at Gilya’s office.
Beets are readily available; mayonnaise is not. Nikolai’s mother stood in line for both items.
