Gastro-Communal Play. Act #3

The third story describes the grocery basket of the neighbours we had to live with.

Setting — Russia, Moscow, Dmitry Ulyanov str., 16.

One Vietnamese family rented a room to us, although they themselves rented an apartment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Probably, renting out housing to us was not quite according to the rules, but let’s leave it to their conscience.

Grandmother, the Mistress and head of the family, came to Moscow from Vietnam in the seventies and began to trade in the clothing market. Many years later, she founded a small clothing factory in Tula. For twenty years she travelled to Tula every day. Two hundred kilometres one way. Every day. I used to hate commuting to work for two hours, but this granny won me over with her stamina.

Daughter of the Mistress, a woman of 40 years old, outwardly similar to a teenager: one and a half meters tall, a pretty face, a luxurious mane of hair, jeans, and sneakers. Small wrinkles around the eyes that were only visible up close.

Grandchildren of the Mistress: the eldest, 15 years old, was studying in Germany, and the youngest, 7 years old, was in the first grade in Moscow.

A special member of the family is Nanny Hue. To be honest, she was a housekeeper, but she was introduced to us as a nanny. Hue was a strong woman of about fifty-five. She had been serving the Mistress for four years, but she was due to return home soon.

Grandma worked the most in this family. She spent four hours a day on the road to Tula and was glad that the factory was so close. The daughter, more experienced with the Internet, sold her mother's goods online. Granny didn’t understand technology. It was easier for her to go to another city and swear at hungover porters in a chic Russian-Vietnamese accent.

Grandchildren lived with gadgets. Even the eldest child, who stayed in Moscow in the summer, kept looking at his smartphone for three months and went out for a walk only on special occasions.

No one in the entire family worried about clothes, ultra-expensive items or rare dishes. They ate boiled rice with pieces of fried fish and chicken. But everyone, even the nanny, had iPhones.

Scene 1. Diet

This Vietnamese family were a distinguished patriot. Every day, Hue cooked rice with about five toppings in a slow cooker. On their table, there was always fish or chicken, pickled vegetables, ginger, soy sauce, sauerkraut and more.

Virtually all non-perishable foods were Vietnamese: instant noodles, soy sauce, fish sauce, dried shrimp, spices, and rice. Products were transported independently or sent by mail. They used every opportunity to deliver native products cheaper.

When the eldest son of the Mistress’s daughter arrived from Vietnam in the summer, he brought 20 kilograms of ginger. They froze some of the ginger and pickled some, still, about half-rotted. They sent big boxes of milk to their homeland. For everyday products, bread, salt, and cola, they went to the grocery, or to the open-air market. “Their own”.

I really liked the colourful chips that Hue fried for the kids. They were pink, orange, white and very tasty. The maid threw a flatbread the size of a nickel into the boiling oil, and it turned into a huge chip. The texture was perfect, like foam. The composition, I’m sure, also contained polymers, but the inscriptions on the box were in Vietnamese. We did not understand anything, so we ate calmly.

Scene 2. Environmental

The Mistress and her daughter communicated with a bunch of people at work and tried to rest at home. For many years they never made local friends. They did not talk and did not share their latest news. Everyone was stuck in a smartphone of their own.

Children would also stay at home all the time, but they were forced to walk, so, unwillingly, Hue had to get out. She only interacted with other Vietnamese nannies at playgrounds, while their children were playing. In four years, the woman learned no more than a dozen words. She was saved by the owner’s youngest grandson, who at the age of eight already knew Russian, English and Vietnamese.

While the adults were at work, two nannies together with three children often visited Hue. We needed silence, so we had to negotiate with them using Google Translate.

Oh, I forgot to say that the apartment was a two-room, standard layout. We lived in one room, and in the larger room there was the Mistress, the daughter, the eldest son, the youngest and the servant. Could you imagine how noisy and cramped it was?

Scene 3. Who was the Lord of the Kitchen?

Nanny dominated the day and granny took over power in the house in the evenings. When I was cooking in the kitchen, the Mistress told me how she got to the USSR, how she traded in the market, and opened a factory. At first, it was interesting, so we listened, and the family happily scattered around the free areas.

The apartment was small, so we often found the Mistress’s daughter, already an adult woman, sitting on the steps in the entrance or on a bench in the yard. The eldest son, despite his dislike for fresh air, also went out into the yard and took cover in the shade of trees with a smartphone.

The rest of the time, Hue was in charge of the house. She practically lived in the kitchen, so I had to cook to the sounds of the Vietnamese version of the Voice show. As soon as I freed the stove, she started cooking. The young people preferred McDonald’s wings, and the middle generation ate business lunches during business meetings, so Hue always shared half her food.

Technically, Hue only cooked for her Mistress, who was never able to give up Vietnamese food. Therefore, for dinner, everyone had to sit and peck rice with chopsticks and some pickled vegetables.

The Epilogue

We rented communal housing in various locations for more than a year and a half. In each house, we tried to adapt to the gastronomic habits of the owners. You should know, it was an interesting experiment.

In a St. Petersburg communal apartment, Natasha taught us how to save money. We stopped spending huge amounts of money on unnecessary products. Together with Nikolai from the second apartment, we realized that it is much easier to stick to a diet than to constantly think: “What should I eat so as not to get fat.” Hue showed that a diet of plain rice is not poverty, but a fairly high standard of living. You just need to learn how to cook it and flavour it with small but varied toppings.

I do not regret at all that I lived with such a variety of families, on the contrary. I can’t say it won’t happen again, but I wouldn’t want to. Although, in life, usually exactly what you least expect happens, and this often being better than what you would have expected to want.

The end

Read the Act#1 — https://medium.com/new-writers-welcome/gastro-communal-play-act-1-whos-the-boss-50a4500603ca

And the Act#2 — https://medium.com/new-writers-welcome/gastro-communal-play-act-2-whos-the-man-of-the-house-4cdff3faf8a2