Trip #4: Russia

Last week, we went on our fourth date night "trip" to a foreign country. This time around it was Russia!

I searched all over the internet for a good Russian game I could make for us to play, but my efforts proved to be in vain. The only thing I could find that would 1. not involve drinking, and 2. work for two people, was playing "War" with a deck of cards.

Woot.

So, I had to get creative. I decided that the "activity" for our date would be a CAVIAR taste-test instead!

What made me think I'd be able to find caviar in this small town I DON'T know... but lady luck was on my side this time around! We have two grocery stores here. The one we do all of our shopping at has some AWESOME people that are always really sweet and will spend 10 minutes looking for weird food requests. 

For example: When I was shopping for our Egypt date, they enlisted half of the stocking staff to look for pita bread. I felt really guilty and really special all at the same time. 

So obviously, I looked there first. But it was a no-go. The really nice night manager was SURE he had seen some before, but we couldn't find anything. I really thought that was just the end of the road, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to check the other store.

THEY HAD ONE JAR LEFT. And I took it. 

Sorry. 

For some reason, the thought of eating caviar has never grossed me out. People eat all sorts of things that come from animals, so I'd really never given it a second thought. Apparently... that's not how most people feel about it. The MIL even jokingly told me she wondered if it should be against the Word of Wisdom! *haha* 

I found out the hard way that the Hubster is in the "EW GROSS, FISH EGGS!" category of people.

Oops.

He was SUCH a good sport, though. And it turned out that he actually ended up liking it!

Caviar side notes: 
1. I bought the cheap stuff (BUDGET, people. I'm on a budget.), so I was half expecting it to be nasty anyway.
2. I KNOW you're not supposed to eat it on Ritz crackers. But that's the closest thing I had to blini, so deal with it.
3. It's worth the $10 for the experience, IMHO.
4. Zooey is not a fan. We gave her a tiny sample to see what she'd do, and she tried to roll in it. (That's dog for: "this stuff stinks!")

For dinner, I had SPECTACULAR plans to make a friend's Borscht recipe. Then I was ill when our date night was supposed to happen, so we postponed a couple of days. By the time we had our date, I was still on the tail end of it, so all of my glorious spend-all-day-cooking-borscht plans went out the window.
We'll definitely be making Borscht another night - I've been itching to try out the recipe, so I'll have to find a way to sneak it into a weekly meal! 

So I made Beef Stroganov instead. In an attempt to make it "more traditional" I served it over rice instead of noodles, as I had seen suggested online. It wasn't the most ethnic or exotic meal I've ever made, but it was still good. We both think it's better with noodles (or maybe the rice needs to be flavored?), but it was a fun experiment!

While we were cleaning up dinner, I told the Hubster how hard it was to find a Russian game and that "it's not like we can play Russian Roulette". He said "SURE WE CAN!" and dug these suckers out.

So we stood about 20 feet apart, put the nerf guns behind our backs, and spun the dials until we lost track of where the dart was. Then on "THREE!" we shot at each other. It was pretty hilarious!



After calming the dog down (she goes crazy when we play with the nerf guns), so settled in to watch a movie. The Hubster picked out Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

How does this relate to Russia, you may ask?

I did, too.

Apparently one of the actors in it is Russian. So we called it good. ;)


So... Trip # 4: SUCCESS.

Next month: Italy :)


To see more about this traveling date night project, or to see other "trips" we've taken, check this out.