About 16 years ago I tutored a lovely woman from Russia in English. We worked together a couple of years and while we were fairly different we really got along. Towards the end of our time together she had her 10th child and her husband left her to return to Russia.

I remember one holiday season I was given about 10 passes to zoolights. I had the brain storm that it would be fun to take my friend and her nine (at the time) kids and I would buy the tickets for me and another friend. I told her there was no cost, but because of our language differences didn’t even try to explain that somebody had given me complimentary tickets.  When we met up at Zoolights, I was surprised to find that my Russian friend had indeed brought her nine kids, as well as her folks, her sister, her sisters six kids and maybe a few more.  Ummm. I really didn’t have the funds to cover that many and they sure didn’t either. So we sent the large Russian contingency in first with all the tickets that we did have. They handed over the tickets and the poor zoo worker started counting them and counting the crowd (all of whom were jabbering away in Russian) and then the zoo worker threw up her hands and ushered everybody in! Problem solved.

All of this came back because my dear daughter informed me yesterday that she had to have pierogies for dinner. Her father had recently introduced her to pierogies and she really took to them! And apparently the pierogies at the the Russian Grocery were the very best.  The Russian Grocery Store’s real name is Friendly Foods and it is located at 3612 Center St #B in Tacoma. It is the size of a large convenience store and is stock full of foods imported from Russia. Most of the customers and workers were speaking Russian (which is what reminded me of my friend!).  I picked up three types of pierogies, though there were probably another eight types there — mostly meat, but also a black cherry. The store included a wonderful bakery case and a deli.