Jerry Avins > wrote:

> Buckwheat is usually on supermarket shelves. It's available raw or
> roasted. The word "kasha" is east European, it's use is similar to "corn"
> which is Anglo-Saxon. Both mean "grain" and denote the common grain of the
> locality. In the US, "corn" means maize; in Scotland, it means barley. In
> Yiddish (and presumably Polish) kasha means buckwheat. Somewhere, it means
> wheat. Be warned. Here in the US, "kasha" usually means roasted buckwheat
> groats. If my Yiddish were better, I might know what "varnishkes" means.

Jerry, are you aware that your posts, each consisting of an endless
line, are hardly readable on many newsreaders? Why insist on using
broken junk, like groups.google? I had to re-wrap your line above,
keeping it properly quoted, which is fortunately easy in my newsreader,
otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.

Regarding kasha, here is an entry from the rfc FAQ:

KASHA - A Russian word meaning porridge or gruel made from any kind
of cereal, the grain being either whole or variously split or cracked.
There are millet, semolina, oat, buckwheat, rice, etc., kashas. In the
US-English, kasha, for some reason, came to mean buckwheat groats.

In other words, kasha, like polenta, is a dish, not an ingredient.

"Varnishkes" is a corruption of "vareniki", just like the whole dish of
"kasha varnishkes" is a lazy version of vareniki (Ukrainian dumplings,
akin to kreplach, etc.) filled, in this case, with buckwheat kasha.

Victor