* FROM THE GARDEN *

"Please crumble a little of onion, then it will whiff as fish, "- an old lady used to say. By these naive words, you can see the place fish occupied in Russian cuisine. As well there is the onion's appraisal.
 A particular proverb about a fast and overly pleasing woman: "As onion, she is suitable for any meal." Indeed, what is more essential for the cook than a ubiquitous onion? About the onion is composed of many proverbs and riddles. "It makes people howl without sorrow, knocks the fumes out of my head, can instantly be made from the bitter to sweet."
 Before WWII, anyone born in the village remembers winter evenings without electricity and bread. A burning stove, a small fireplace, onion on the oven bunk and ... a bulb of sweet onion baked on the fire. The first arrows of onion, green, springy, its bitterness kill any infection in your mouth. They would come to the rescue when, in the summer, the oven was empty; to pick a bunch, slice with a knife and pound with the pestle in a wooden bowl was a minute thing.
 Rigid pipe of green onion with the cleaned skin was also edible, though sometimes squeezed tears out. And paired with potato, the onion ruled the rooster on the peasant table. Onions and boiled potatoes in kvas and half of loaf of rye bread replaced during the Fast, even a meat soup.
Crushed potatoes with black radish in kvas are favourite dishes during the haymaking in those places where people still drink the malt kvas. Potatoes, baked on the autumn campfire, loved not only by children but by many adults, are cooked in bathhouses, barns, and ovens.
During the hard time's limericks were sung:
 "Potatoes, Potatoes,
What honour do you have?
If there were no potatoes,
 What we would eat?"
     But potatoes are not respected in the other, higher genres of folklore. But ordinary "repa" (golden turnip)  immortalized in fairy tales was squeezed out at the beginning of the XXth century by rutabagas and then disappeared altogether.     
    This is for a reason. In the middle of summer, golden turnips were sown on fallow land on St. John's day, so it would not be eaten by earthen fleas. Therefore, like peas, this vegetable was most likely a field vegetable rather than a garden vegetable.
By the fall, in not yet harvested barley fields like mushrooms grew constellations of small yellow "repas." Stealing them was part of the number of traditional child and adolescent mischief attributes. Adults were condescending to taking of not yet picked up peas and repas, although the punishment with the burning shame and no less stinging nettles threatened every thief.
  An exciting chill of risk, like bitterness to the sweet white pulp, was added to the children's raids on the strip. The inner side of the skin had a beautiful wavy pattern. It crunched in the mouth.
 From repas was cooked chowder. Repa pies were baked as described above, but most importantly, it was steamed on the stove. The large pot was stuffed with washed repas; it was placed upside down on the shovel overnight in a warm oven. In the morning, around the iron pot started a real feast. The "parenitsa" (steamed repas) was eaten by children and adults, straight and with bread, with salt and without salt. If the same "parenitsa" is finely cut to pieces from the pan and put in the oven overnight again, we get now "vyalenitsa" (cured repas), the most popular children treat.
Even more famous was dried steamed carrots, sometimes brewed instead of tea. In the household of big family homes, in basements, there was usually more than one tub of such dried carrots. It was taken by anybody, people stuffed with it in their pockets, chew on gatherings. It was used even in gambling.
In the Russian North rutabaga, strange popularity was because of a foreign origin nicknamed "galanka" (Holland/Dutch). It wasn't not sown in the field but planted as seedlings in the garden. It grew big, but it was not so tasty, like repa, but more economical, the tops were used to feed the cattle. From rutabagas steamed the same "parenitsa" and cured "vyalenitsa," but later, it was replaced by the feed turnips out of which you could make neither the one nor the other. Carrots, cucumbers and beets were allotted small vegetable beds for each.
Freshly sliced cucumbers mixed with boiled potatoes and drenched with sour cream, eaten in the autumn instead of the entree. Beet and most of the carrots were left for some reason to the cattle. But the cabbage was again in great honour; only cabbage was added into the soup. Fresh cabbage, like repas, was steamed in the oven. The cabbage was fermented in two ways: diced and chopped. Those who tasted sauerkraut forever remember its vibrancy and taste, not like anything. Fermented cabbage was mixed with crushed boiled potatoes and drenched with linseed oil during fasts. The same way it was done with grated black radish. Cleaned back radish always floated in a tub with cold water. It was fetched in the mornings and evenings. Grated black radish in kvas, mixed with hot, just crushed potatoes, would be a centrepiece for any contemporary lunch table ... The taste of burning in the cold gives many people a unique charm, while others are indifferent to such details.