REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

	Students Get a Taste of a Russian Orthodox Lenten Lunch By NICOLE NEROULIAS Posted Wednesday, March 20, 2002; 6 p.m. EST

Most of us greeted the lunch at the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy at Sergiyev Possad with cautious sniffing and poking. The simple meal consisted of kisel (a warm red drink made of berries, water and starch), white and brown bread, lentil soup, kasha (roasted buckwheat kernels) and sauerkraut. To be fair, Prof. Ari Goldman had warned us that the food might be "highly untasty" due to the dietary restrictions of Lent and monastic life. With the exception of Alan Rappeport, who sufficed with six slices of bread, the rest of us gave in to our hunger after these initial reactions:

Nada El Sawy: "I feel like I'm in prison!"

Darren Foster: "It's all very brown."

Michael Gartland: "It's great! I'll eat anything but lima beans."

Ari Goldman: "Kasha is one of my favorite foods. When my wife and I started to go out, she made me kasha knishes, so I'm blissed out right now."

Noah Haglund: "It's nice to get back to basics."

Jennifer Ho: "These are some very interesting textures."

Charnicia Huggins: "This reminds me of my father's blended drink experiments."

Molly Knight: "It's sort of like eating in an organic food store, I guess."

Brian McGuire: "It's very earthy."

Nicole Neroulias: "This drink tastes like a melted Jello shot."

Elizabeth O'Brien: "We were prepared for the worst, so this isn't so bad."

Alan Rappeport: "Are we being punished?"

Anusha Shrivastava: "The soup's actually fantastic! It's the best I've had since we've been here."

Nicole Still: "It's, um, edible."

Matt Volz: "I gave up meat for Lent, so at least I can eat everything here."

Andrei Zolotov: "I told the seminary to serve us whatever they would be eating, so this is better than I expected."