Peanut butter

I eat a lot of nut butter at home, generally in sandwiches at lunch. I was missing it, so I set out to find some at the supermarket. Unfortunately I didn’t know the name for it in Russian. My dictionary has three unpronounceable words for “peanut” and I have no idea which of them might be associated with “butter” or if the concept even makes any sense in Russian. Hoping to get a leg up on the situation, I called one of my middle-school friends who speaks reasonable English over the phone. She tried hard, but couldn’t make any sense of what I was asking her. I’m afraid she doesn’t know the word “peanut” in English any better than I know it in Russian, and nut butter is probably an unfamiliar concept to her.

So I went into the store to look around. Spotting a clerk, I had a flash of insight and asked her in my best Russian if she knew where I could find Nutella. Bingo! They had peanut butter in small overpriced jars beside the even-more-overpriced Nutella. I bought a jar of crunchy PB anyway. I also bought a jar of the stuff located between the two products. It’s called Shokoladnoye Lukoshko. I recognized the first word as an adjective made from the word chocolate, and since the jar had a picture of a very enthusiastic puppy in a T-shirt (you had to see it) I bought it. I still don’t know what Lukoshko means, but this stuff is really good. It’s kind of like thick bittersweet Nutella. Since I’m checking my luggage, I hope I can get a jar of this stuff home with me. I really like it.