So much of my grandmother’s cookbook is not recipes but (undated, alas) lists of what she pickled that year: how many jars, what kind, what sort of produce (say, skinny , plump ). Food is both quantity and quality.

And then there are recipes named after people rather than the dishes (Nadia’s recipe). Dunno who Nadia is and will never find out, but she’s baked into our family’s cooking lore for as long as people can read Russian.

Health remedies are everywhere—like this “Caucasian Balm,” made with citrus, cranberries, honey and dried fruit, supposedly helps with heart conditions... sounds kinda good), and many recipes are scribbled on medical prescriptions. Such a weird archive.

Tamara Petrovna on Suvorov St (now renamed) cut hair well, and one Dzvina was kind to recommend her. But look for the tail end of the eggplant caviar recipe (never called eggplant but “the blue ones”; boy, it will take a lot of Russian lessons to pass this on to my kids).