Sketching, Illustration, Design and Everyday Life.
Copyright by © Nina Khashchina except where noted.
Holidays are usually a non-stop baking situation in my household, and this year was not different. However, there were some new-ish and quite colorful cooking adventures which I sketched: Sobolo, Fermented Cabbage, and Pickled Veggies. Should I go back to making a cookbook? :)
No matter how I look at it, there is no denying that we are heading into the fall. But summer is still on my mind - especially since the San Francisco Bay Area does not get fall weather till the end of November. To compensate, people are trying to introduce the upcoming season with decorations (pumpkins are everywhere!) But there are still a couple of weeks left on the schedule for the farmer's market that I frequent in the summer, so I will still count this as a summer-themed post.
I already reported on a few things that were especially memorable this growing season (avocados, figs, and eggplants). But some beauties - found, grown, and purchased - were left out of the conversation:
Neighbor's tree had an abundance of plums - I carried them in a little bag improvised with my handkerchief. We also picked up some apples and a tasty, yet angle-shaped asian pear (they are in the peak of the season by the way!)
This strawberry was something from the other world - and helped me to make my choice of the strawberry basket an easy one (I usually struggle for at least a couple of minutes before deciding which one to buy).
I had so much fun drawing the borscht, and it inspired so many lovely online and offline conversations that I decided to draw more from the kitchen lore of my family - here is Lobio!
There are many wonderful spellings of this word БОРЩ in English but I will stick to this one: BORSCHT. It is a very tasty Ukrainian beet soup, winter version of which is eaten warm. I will draw the cold one when it is more appropriate for the season :)
I drew this for my friend Suhita and she followed this recipe to make it and liked the result - so it is proven to work :)
