Russian way of eating

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I came from Russia to America in 1994. So for the most part I am eating in American way, but when I accidentally get reminded of Russian way of eating -- which happens really rarely -- a nastalgy comes up. So here are some of the ways of Russian eating; I am wondering if people from other countries can relate.

1. In America they have breakfast (morning), lunch (noon) and dinner (around 6); in Russia they have breakfast (morning), dinner (any time between noon and around 3 pm) and supper (around 7 or 8 ). So, with this particular wording, both countries have "dinner" as the biggest meal -- except that Russian dinner takes place in the middle of the day rather than evening.

2. In Russian meal in the middle of the day there are two portions: "first" and "second"; the "first" is always soup, while the "second" is some dish other than soup. During the morning meal or evening meal, however, there is only one dish -- and that dish is "not" the soup; the soup is strictly a daytime thing.

3. In Russia when they serve soup each person puts sour cream themselves, while in America all the ingredients are already in the soup, I believe (but I am not sure about this one, I am only judging America based off of restaurants).

4. In Russia they sometimes "eat with bread". What this means is that they eat the spoon of the dish, after that they take a bite of bread, after that they take the spoon of the dish again, after that they take a bite of bread again, and so forth. I don't think Americans ever eat that way. Americans eat sandwish -- which is a dish of its own that doesn't require any other dish -- but Russians eat bread (that is NOT a sandwich) together with the other dish like I described. The closest American example I can think of is Italian restaurant where they would serve bread. But thats not quite it either: in Italian restaurant they eat bread while they wait for the dish to come. Russians, on the other hand, eat bread at the same time as they eat the dish.

5. In Russia, the little kids have the meal that most adults don't have, its called "poldnyak". It comes between the daytime meal and evening meal (closer in time to daytime meal I must say) which consists of sweets. When I look it up online sometimes I see them saying that poldnyak is served between morning meal and daytime meal, but I have never seen this when I was in Russia; what I seen was that it was served between daytime meal and evening meal.

6. In Russia, after each meal, they drink either tea or coffee. In America sometimes they have juice or iced tea, but no, not in Russia. In Russia its either tea or coffee -- and tea is hot; they don't usually drink iced tea in Russia.

7. When they serve tea after meal sometimes they eat something sweet too. Not too much but a little bit, like a couple of cookies or something like that.

Does any of this ring a bell?

In the old days in the US, people used to have "midday" dinner and late supper---similar to how it's done in Europe.

I'm guessing the switching of the midday meal and the evening meal occurred because people had to work from about 8 to 6, six days a week in the old days, with very little time for the large "midday meal"---which became "lunch."

People in the US didn't get 1-hour lunch breaks back in the 19th century.

By the way, my mother's side of the family are from Belarus. They came here in 1910.

Nope. I know no Russian. And very little Yiddish.

Back then, they spoke Yiddish and Russian.

I like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Gorky, though.

My mother is Jewish. My father was Roman Catholic.

I am much more Jewish "culturally" than religiously. I'm an agnostic atheist.

Are you familiar with the "Pale"?

My great-grandparents were in Minsk, which was in the Russian Empire then, and part of the Pale. I don't know if they witnessed any pogroms----but my grandmother and her family were part of the "Great Age of Immigration" when they arrived in New York in 1910.

They escaped the Pale.

Jews were forced to settle in the Pale, and couldn't settle elsewhere in Russia. Minsk was part of the Pale of Settlement.

If they settled elsewhere, they were severely persecuted. You could leave the Pale---but you could not settle elsewhere in Russia without severe repercussions. You could immigrate to other places (sometimes experiencing great hardship in doing so). Being a migrant is uprooting yourself.

Those folks in "Fiddler on the Roof" had been living in their village for generations. Now, all of a sudden, because of the Tsarists, they had to uproot themselves from the only home they knew, and move elsewhere. How would you feel if you had to do that?

Imagine if you were forced, because you were Jewish, to settle in a certain part of New York City, and were banned from living elsewhere in the city? Imagine if that part of the City was the really lousy part of the city? Imagine if you saw a nice house that you could afford---in a beautiful part of the city----but that you couldn't buy it because you were Jewish?

They didn't literally "escape"----but, in metaphorical terms, they most certainly "escaped."

Minsk was part of the Pale of Settlement.

It was a large city then. The population was just over 91,000 in 1897.