You will have a long and prosperous life...IN MOSCOW!

So lydia made the good point the other day that doing anything here is like being stuck inside a never ending version of the fortune cookie "in bed" game.  only, instead of adding "in bed" to the end of every statement or idea, everything i do is rounded off with a thrilling "IN MOSCOW!!" in my head.  then i proceed to giggle like a naive little 12-year-old (interestingly enough, the demographic in which the "in bed" game is most popular).  

for example, yesterday i took a shower, but not just any shower...my first shower IN MOSCOW!  right now i'm listening to sufjan stevens, but what makes it amazing is that i am listening to sufjan IN MOSCOW.

anyway, today i had a pumpkin soup adventure (...IN MOSCOW).

sasha was home working on her dissertation and after noticing my distinct lack of activities, asked me if i wanted to make something for lunch (she knows i love to cook).  i jumped at the opportunity to put off studying russian (oh my i need to review) and immediately found a recipe for pumpkin apple soup on eatingwell.com.  i grabbed the pumpkin that sasha offered, and started trying to hack away at it.  

however, i quickly found that this was no ordinary pumpkin.  this pumpkin was HARDCORE.  i stabbed it over and over all horror-movie style, and microwaved it...to no avail.  then i stabbed it some more.  as i did this, i began to think of the trials of the typical russian pumpkin.  

this pumpkin knew how to survive a russian winter.  this pumpkin was bred from the stock that managed to live and reproduce, while napoleon's army perished.  this pumpkin outlasted the french army!!!

oh my god...i was now hellbent on hacking up this pumpkin.  i knew that within the next hour or so, one of us was going to be made into a soup- and to be honest, there was a concerning period when the answer as to who it was was unclear.

finally i managed to overpower the pumpkin...the pumpkin that overpowered the french army...

i had done what the french army had failed to!!!

(...ok don't think about that one too hard...)

anyway, the pumpkin turned into a delicious soup, and you can find the recipe here: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/pumpkin_apple_soup.html

fun side note: as i was hacking away at the pumpkin, lydia and lena and i were chatting on line, trying to come up with dirty variations of famous individuals' names (i think the conversation started as a discussion of unlikely "sexy halloween costume" themes).  below are some of the best:  

e.m. floreplay-ster

John Milf-ton

Horace mann-handler

Derobespierre

the others were also excellent, but probably too dirty for the internet (HAH).  

i think we discovered a new film genre with lots of potential- historical fiction pornos.

(mad props to lydia and lena.)