Margarita Gokun Silver

Growing up in 1970s and 1980s Moscow, my day began and ended with tea. Always in a cup with a saucer, in the mornings it accompanied a breakfast of eggs or a cheese sandwich and in the evenings a dushevni (or soulful) conversation with my mother. We made the tea by mixing boiling hot water with the concentrated tea brew, or zavarka, directly in the cups. The staple of every Soviet household, zavarka was kept in a ceramic teapot and lasted at least a day.