For a college student I think I'm fairly capable of cooking for myself; during the school year I have a meal plan but during the summers I cook all my meals. The funny thing about cooking for yourself in Russia is that, surprise, all the labels are in Russian. I recently tried to make mac & cheese and out of the 3 ingredients you need, I didn't actually know what two of them were. The cheese was cheap, the milk was cheap, but the exact specification were unknown. Even without the tools to grate the cheese it still turned out fine, but cooking in a foreign countries is essentially all about guessing correctly.
However, it's not just the language you have to work around, it's the stores themselves. There are three small grocery stores near our dorm and placement and stock of the goods seems to change randomly. One day I got yogurt, liked it, and went back a couple days later to find the store didn't have any. Not that it was all sold out, there simply wasn't a spot for it. Additionally, staple items like chicken stock and impossible to find. I don't know if they just don't have stocks in Russia or if I'm just looking in the wrong places in the larger grocery store, but it remains elusive. Other staple items like peanut butter are much more expensive and there's little variety. Here's some ~$9.00 peanut butter.
However, when you do find an ingredient that you've been searching for the joy is real. Here I am proudly holding broccoli.
There are lots of options if we don't want to cook all our meals, too. Lunches are offered at school and they usually consist of a grain + topping, soup, salad, a roll of some sort, and coffee, tea, or compote (a fruit drink). We get to choose what we want and don't want and overall it's fairly cheap, around 250 rubles. I usually go for the soup or grain + topping and coffee.
There are also cafes pretty close to school; students regularly visit a chain called MuMu (pronounced MooMoo) and Shake Shack. If you venture farther from school there's lots of affordable sushi, Asian food, KFC, and really anything else you could want.
I am also quite fond of dessert so I've had a lot of fun trying different things. If you go to bakeries later in the evening you can get cakes and pastries for ~$0.60! What a steal!
S'mores dip with weird whole grain crackers.
The traditional foods here are borscht, a beetroot soup, and cold salads made up of a variety of bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, carrots, etc. Russians also love their dill!
Overall, the food situation is pretty good and I usually know what I'm eating, which hasn't always been the case in other countries. Wish me luck in my further culinary adventures!
