Food from afar

[limey]

Greetings from sunny Dushanbe! I got to the hotel here at 6am, so didn't consider it worthwhile getting some sleep.
I forgot to photograph the splendid breakfast at this lovely guesthouse - maybe tomorrow?
But this afternoon I sloped off to a local supermarket to get some supper.
This is USD6 of supper - I largely picked things which I remember fondly from my days in Rostov on Don in the 1990s.
The box in the foreground contains what we in Blighty call Russian salad. The Russians and post-Soviet nations to which it spread call it Olivier ... because it was reputedly invented by the French chef of some Muscovite aristo. Chopped cooked veg and sausage in mayo.
The other box further back on the left contains kuraga - dried apricots, but what a taste, and of what size!
The bottle is half-a-litre of Borjomi - Georgian mineral water. To say that this was a "product" which was "marketed" throughout the Soviet Union would be misleading, but it was certainly sold everywhere in the old SU and they were rightly proud of it. The packaging has had a makeover, but the water itself, with a slight sparkle and a hint of salty mineralishness is just as good as I remembered.
The bread is a little chewy, it may be that this particular loaf is more for show than consumption. More pictures of it in the next post.