When I present talks about space for various groups, I am frequently asked about what might be served to set the mood. Unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of choices – from the American program one might feature cups of  Tang, chunks of freeze-dried ice cream that most people will try one nibble of, and a fruitcake that was developed in 1968 and is actually pretty good. As far as I can tell, no recipes were ever released for foods developed for the Soviet or Russian programs. This is probably because the objective there was to give cosmonauts a diet as much like they ate at home as possible, so even if they were eating from a tube, what was inside was something they already liked.

This would seem to make it difficult to have a party where you recreate the experience of living in a Soviet space station, but a company called Biryulevsky Experimental Factory has come to your rescue. In February of this year they started selling these:Those are tubes of borshcht, the Russian cabbage soup called shchi, kharcho beef and walnut stew, pickle soup (rassolnik), marinated mutton, pork with vegetables, and meat pate.  For dessert they offer cottage cheese with sea buckthorn, apricot, apple and black currant purees). Here’s a link to an article about them… Unfortunately as far as I can tell the tubes of space food are only sold in Moscow, but if I find out otherwise I’ll post here.

If you do host a space station themed party before these become available, you may just have to make your own Russian food; I suppose you could put it into squeeze bottles if you went, but it will taste better if you don’t. Remember to attach some of your furniture to the walls and ceiling to set the right mood…