From Russia With Love: Making Russian Dreams Come True: One Taco at a Time

4-17-11

So one night like a month ago, Makar and Olyana were watching spongebob while Philip and I were sitting reading on the couch. Well in the show Spongebob started talking about Taco’s. Makar looks at us and asks, “Can you make Tacos?” We say, “Yeah sure.” We did bring Taco seasoning, so why not? So a couple weeks later we still hadn’t gotten around to making Taco’s, so Makar is on us about it and asks us if we will make Taco’s the next day. We of course say yes and do make the Taco’s. We sit down to eat the Taco’s with Anya and Makar (Olyana was at her grandmothers) and Anya and Makar are just staring at the home made tortilla’s and all the toppings with an “I have no idea what to do with all this” expression on their faces. They ask us how you put together a Taco and so we showed them how. They copied what we did and then began to try and eat it. They didn’t quite get the rolling up and folding the end technique, so they had taco spilling out all over their plates. My plate is usually towards the messier end of the bunch when we eat, but this time my plate was the cleanest for once! While as Makar is eating his taco with the toppings spilling everywhere he stops eating to say something and I began to fear for the worst. He didn’t like tacos, they were gross and too messy. Luckily, I was wrong. He stopped and said, “I have seen Taco’s on Spongebob, on Fairly Odd Parents, on Phineas and Ferb, but I never thought they would be so good. This is my dream to eat a taco. They are so tastey.” That one sentence pretty much made every sucky part of this experience worth it.

Well, if only the taco story ended there, but it doesn’t. So Anya really liked the taco’s too. She liked them so much that she decided that she would make them for all her guests at Olyana’s birthday party in a couple of weeks. Birthday parties are big in Russia. For Olyana’s birthday, not only were her friends invited, but so were Makar’s friends and Anya’s friends too. The day before this big party Philip taught Anya how to make tortillas and looked up a recipe for home made taco seasoning since we didn’t have any of ours left. Well Anya went out and bought all the proper spices, ground them up, and made Taco’s. Two things I must mention here; first, it was very amusing to watch all these Russian kids and adults being shown how to put taco’s together and attempting to eat them without it spilling all over the place, and second, those taco’s were the best tacos I have ever eaten in my entire life, no joke. Anya’s first time ever making taco’s and tortilla’s and it was amazing. Those tacos were delicious. Yum. I’m sure the next Americans who come and live with Anya will be very surprised when she randomly cooks them up some delicious taco’s. Your welcome you lucky Americans. [We taught them brownies as well, which they also really love, so those Americans will be quite lucky!]