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Our diner du voyage consisted of pilmania, roast beef, and partridge with bread, cakes, tea, and quass. Our table furniture was somewhat limited, and the room was littered with garments temporarily discarded. The ladies were crinolineless, and their coiffures were decidedly not Parisian.
In a frozen state a bag full of pilmania is like the same quantity of walnuts or marbles, and can be tossed about with impunity. When a traveler wishes to dine upon this article he orders a pot of boiling water and tosses a double handful of pilmania into it. After five minutes boiling the mass is ready to be eaten in the form of soup. Salt, pepper, and vinegar can be used with it to one's liking.
As the yemshick did not understand our conversation, he at once set us down as Israelites in whom there was any quantity of guile. We breakfasted on pilmania, bread, and tea while the horses were being changed, and I managed to increase our bill of fare with some boiled eggs. The continual jolting and the excessive cold gave me a good appetite and excellent digestion.
We concluded to dine there, and were waited upon by a comely young woman whose coiffure showed that she was unmarried. She brought us the samovar, cooked our pilmania, and boiled a dizaine of eggs. Among the Russians articles which we count by the dozen are enumerated by tens. "Skolka stoit, yieetsa?"
In winter, provisions can be easily carried as the frost preserves them alike from decaying or crushing. Soup, meats, bread, and other edibles can be carried on long routes with perfect facility. There is a favorite preparation for Russian travel under the name of pilmania. It is a little ball of minced meat covered with dough, the whole being no larger than a robin's egg.
"Any pilmania?" was our next inquiry. "Nierte; nizniu." The 'everything' hunted down consisted of eggs, bread, and hot water. We brought out a boiled ham, that was generally our piece de resistance, and made a royal meal. If trichina spiralis existed in Siberian ham, it was never able to disturb us. We found no fruit as there are no orchards in Siberia.
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