Kitchen Talk

Sofia's Kitchen, Verkhovyna, Carpathian Mountains

I have heard native-born Ukrainians refer to the language spoken by members of the Ukrainian diaspora, living in the US and Canada as “kitchen Ukrainian,” a not-quite contemporary Ukrainian, often with English or other influences. It is also meant to reflect the fact that many first and second generation Ukrainian Americans and Canadians learned Ukrainian from their mother or grandmothers, usually while they helped with cooking. Indeed, several friends with Ukrainian roots that grew up in the US and Canada have shared these kinds of insights. 

The Beekeeper's kitchen, Donbass Oblast

Social scientists actually use the term “diaspora language” to describe the dialects or variations of languages spoken in places of migration. These languages evolve, as all languages do, absorbing new influences and changes to their community. In the context of rapid change in Ukraine, as well as long absences from the country, language and food practices seem to be the most tangible connection to this culture for people with Ukrainian roots living in other parts of the world.

Svitlana, in her Kyiv kitchen

Through the Pickle Project, we too have learned a kind of kitchen language, Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar, spending time, mostly with women, talking about food. Standing over stoves, hunched over plants in the garden: Як ви сказали? How do you say it? 

Lenura's kitchen in Ak-Meshet, Crimea

Maybe it is because that is where Mama is, or, where the food is, or, where the work is.. Everyone is always hanging out in the kitchen. Included here are photos of some kitchens that we have been lucky enough to spend time in.

The 1970's kitchen, Pyrohiv National Museum of Folk Architecture

Of course, nothing foments fervent debate or connections to identity and culture quite like language in Ukraine. So, please consider this an open invitation to share your own thoughts, stories and experiences about the intersection of food practice, cultural preservation and food. 

Historic Photo, Ukrainian Market

Our Debut Video! What Food Reminds You of Home?

Last summer, on a visit to Simferopol, Alie Yuldasheva was generous enough to sit down with us in a Crimean Tatar restaurant and talk about her own family traditions.  We're far from video experts,  but this was the start of some short video podcasts that we'll be sharing with you.   The Crimea provided us with so many memorable experiences and we were privileged to learn more about the diverse cultures there.  Alie's favorite food is a great metaphor for our Pickle Project work.  Plov, she says, "represents [the[ sharing idea."  

What Food Reminds You of Home? Alie Yuldasheva from The Pickle Project on Vimeo.

Thanks to Alie for making that sharing idea a reality,  Anna Harty for editing, and Barb Weiser for hosting us on the Simferopol leg of our trip last summer.  And a special note to Peace Corps volunteers:  we met, as you'll hear, Alie through Peace Corps volunteers--so other volunteers,  please join in.  We'd love to see other favorite food videos--a great student project for English teachers!

New Year's Recipes

In a previous post, Barb Wieser shared the preparations for a New Year's Eve dinner in Crimea.  Her friend Lenura is a marvelous cook, who is so instinctive that she usually works without recipes.  But Barb took careful notes on the feast's preparation,  so we're happy to share the delicious recipes with our readers.  Thanks again, Barb and Lenura, for all your efforts!

New Year’s Dinner Menu

Stuffed Fish

Dolmades (stuffed peppers)

Oven baked beef the “French way”

Olivie Salad

Shuba Salad

Pomegranate Bracelet Salad

Side plates: Sliced bread with butter and red caviar; black olives; orange and kiwi slices

Recipes
 

Stuffed Fish:

1. Gut a large fish and peel off the skin, leaving it intact. Cut off head and save.

2. Chop up the fish meat and add a few chunks of beef and salo. Run through a grinder along with two heads of garlic cloves.

3. Mix the ground meat and garlic with 2 eggs, mayonnaise, flour, salt and pepper.

4. Stuff mixture into the fish skin and sew up. Arrange fish on a cooking platter with head.

5. Bake for about one hour at medium heat. Slice and serve.
 
Dolmades (stuffed peppers):

1.     Grind up 1 kg. of meat (mutton or beef) to make farsh (ground meat). Mix with ½ kg. chopped onions and 1 cup rice, rinsed.

2.     When tomatoes are in season, chop up tomatoes and add to mixture.

3.     Stuff mixture into peppers which have been deseeded and tops cut off. We used peppers Lenura had frozen from earlier in the year. Worked well except our fingers froze stuffing the peppers.

4.     Pack tightly upright in a large soup pot. Cover with salted water and cook until done. Serve with sour cream.
 
Oven baked beef the “French way”

1.     Thinly slice beef, salt and put in covered bowl in refrigerator for several hours.

2.     Slice 4 large onions and layer on large baking pan.

3.     Layer meat on top on the onions. Sprinkle with a package of spices for meat (not sure what they were, but you could use anything that works for beef).

4.     Peel and thinly slice two potatoes and layer on top of the meat.

5.     Layer 400 g. mushrooms on top—use very small mushrooms so they can be left whole, or slice if needed.

6.     Add a layer of cheese and bake until done.

Olivie Salad

Chop finely cooked carrots and potatoes. Mix with chopped hard boiled eggs, some kind of meat—usually ham or sausage, but we used chicken--, chopped pickles, a can of peas, and mayonnaise and salt and pepper.

 Shuba Salad: (also called Fish under a Fur coat)

1.     Boil 2 beets, 2 potatoes, 1 carrot; cool and peel.

2.     Gut and chop up one salted raw fish (herring)

3.     Layer to make salad—Grated potatoes, mayonnaise, fish, mayonnaise, grated carrots, mayonnaise, grated beets, and top with layer of mayonnaise. Decorate with mustard.

Pomegranate Bracelet Salad:

1.     Finely chop up 2 onions and ½ kg. mushrooms. Saute in butter.

2.     Boil 2 skinless chicken breasts and cool and shred meat.

3.     Grate and peel 4-6 beets. Mix with 6 minced garlic cloves, a handful of finely chopped black prunes, mayonnaise.

4.     To make the salad, put an overturned glass into the center of a large plate to create the ring. Layer shredded chicken, mushrooms and onion mixture, mayonnaise, the beet mixture.

5.     Cover the ring with 2 cups finely chopped walnuts and pomegranate seeds (one whole pomegranate).

A New Year's Feast from Crimea

Barb Wieser,  our favorite Crimean correspondent, shares a great New Year's meal that exemplifies the diversity of foodways in Ukraine where home cooks mix and mingle influences from around the world to create delicious meals.  Thanks Barb and Lenura (above), a fabulous cook!  Look for recipes and more photos in a following post.

Take the Christmas tree, presents, lights and all the general hoopla of American Christmas and combine them with the fireworks and partying of New Year’s and what do you have? New Year’s Eve in Ukraine. For the seventy years of the Soviet Union, religious holidays were banned. Not to be deterred from celebrating, the Soviet people took those Christmas traditions and morphed them into one big celebration on New Year’s Eve. In present day Ukraine, Christmas is once again celebrated (Eastern Orthodox Christmas is on January 7), but it is a fairly low key affair and focused around the church. New Year’s Eve continues to be the big holiday of the season, and much of it is focused on food.

The food preparation for the New Year’s Eve family dinner typically begins with a trip a week earlier to the local bazaar to stock up on all the products necessary for the New Year’s cooking and celebrations. In my Crimean Tatar family, this consisted of large bags of onions, carrots, potatoes, beets; the fruits of the season--oranges, apples, pomegranates, kiwis, mandarins; various candies; sausages and cheeses; sacks of walnuts; champagne, vodka, sodas and fruit juices, and of course, a very large quantity of mayonnaise. Closer to the 31st the meats were purchased—salted herring, a large whole freshwater fish commonly found around here, chicken, and beef to be baked whole and also ground into farsh. We checked to make sure the staples were stocked up—flour, sugar, eggs, rice, salt and pepper—and the preparations were ready to get underway.

All of December, the mother of the Crimean Tatar family I live with, Lenura, mused about what to make for New Year’s, soliciting opinions from the family. She slowly put together a menu, making adjustments even on the last day (like deciding what kind of cake to make). Unlike our American Thanksgiving, there are not many “traditional” New Year’s foods in Ukraine, and menus seem to vary with the whims of who is doing the cooking and different cultural traditions, though all the menus lean heavily to some kind of meat and mayonnaise based salads. But there are two traditional salads that are found on all New Year’s menus across Ukraine and Russia—Olivie Salad and Shuba or “Fish under a Fur Coat.” 

Olivie Salad is a mixture of finely chopped carrots, hardboiled eggs, pickles, sausage (or ham or chicken), combined with canned peas and lots of mayonnaise. According to internet sources (and affirmed by the people I asked), Olivie Salad was named after a French chef who first created it in a restaurant in Moscow in the 1860’s. Shuba is a layer of chopped herring, covered by the “fur coat”--layers of grated potatoes, carrots, and beets, interspersed with layers of mayonnaise.

We also prepared a salad called Pomegranate Bracelet which involved a ring salad (created by placing an overturned glass in the middle of a plate) and consisted of a layer of chicken and mushrooms covered with shredded beets mixed with, you guessed it, mayonnaise, and topped with walnuts and pomegranate seeds.

Every dish we cooked included some quantity of mayonnaise. Ukrainians consume large amounts of mayonnaise on every possible food, even pizza!  I have asked several friends why mayonnaise is so popular and this is the typical answer: “During the Soviet period it was impossible to purchase mayonnaise and it only became available near the end of the Soviet era. Once mayonnaise started appearing in stores, it was rapidly snatched up and became an ingredient in many dishes, especially salads.” However, the Crimean Tatars (the Muslim ethnic people in Ukraine that I live and work with) have their own distinct ethnic foods and rarely use mayonnaise and talk with disdain about the Ukrainian food and “all that mayonnaise.” However, we mostly we did not make Crimean Tatar dishes for New Year’s Eve,  but the one we dish we did make—peppers stuffed with rice and ground meat called Dolmades—sure enough, did not have any mayonnaise. But this was the New Year’s Eve dinner, after all, and somehow it had to include large quantities of mayonnaise—so much so that we twice ran out and had to send one of the kids to the neighborhood store for more.

Besides all those mayonnaise salads, the dinner menu also included a stuffed fish, a meat/potatoes/mushroom/cheese dish (which Lenura called beef baked “the French Way”), the meat and rice stuffed peppers, and a delicious lemon cake with Lenura seemed to just create out of whatever she had on hand.

Though everything was very tasty (especially when washed down with the continual New Year’s toasts), I thought the real masterpiece of the dinner was the stuffed fish. I had been served it once before at a New Year’s dinner at their house, but it definitely is not a traditional New Year’s dish at anyone else’s house. I asked Lenura if she had learned it from her mother, but she said, “No, it is just something I made up.” Basically the dish consists of first gutting a fish and peeling off its skin intact. The fish meat is then run through a grinder along with junks of beef and salo (the Ukrainian national food of cured slabs of pork fat) and a lot of garlic. The ground meat is then mixed with eggs, a little flour, and yes, a little mayonnaise, and stuffed back into the fish, and baked. Served on a bed of lettuce with a hardboiled egg “flower hat”, it was an elegant centerpiece of our Ukrainian/Crimean Tatar New Year’s Dinner. С Новым Годом!

Will 2012 Be the Year of the Pickle? Only with Your Help!

It's official, James Oseland of Saveur Magazine has named pickles as one of his top food trends for 2012. We're happy to be ahead of the curve as 2011 was a pretty amazing year for the Pickle Project and we hope 2012 will be more of the same.

A year ago, we were deep into our Kickstarter fundraising efforts. We still can't say enough about the support we received. From across the world--including Sweden, Japan, Ukraine, Canada and the United States--dozens of you pitched in to help make our effort to document and share Ukrainian food traditions a reality. We truly felt buoyed by all of your good wishes when we returned to Ukraine.

Our two Pickle Project trips this year were each very different, but both were distinguished by the warmth and hospitality of Ukrainian friends and colleagues. Our three weeks in high summer were full of berries, of home-cooked meals, of walks in hills of Crimea and the Carpathians, and of long conversation-filled train rides for the two of us. This fall, returning with Caleb Zigas and Rueben Nilsson, our four Pickle Project Conversations cemented our friendships with great organizational partners the Bulgakov Museum, Eko Art, PIC NGO and the Centre for Cultural Management. We ate, we drank, we found ourselves in conversations that ranged from what we eat for dinner to how to support small farmers. Thanks to the Trust for Mutual Understanding and Shelburne Farms for making this possible.

Back in the US, I had the chance to share the work of the Pickle Project in five different presentations at locations ranging from a Catskills community roundtable to an American Association of Museums presentation in Texas. Lively questions always ensued.

But what will 2012 hold? And how can you help?
We continue to be inspired and driven by the interests, questions and comments from our Kickstarter backers, our readers and the people we engage through the Pickle Project, in Ukraine, the US and elsewhere.

We're working on a number of different ideas--ranging from promoting further exchange, to exhibitions, to projects with young people. We'd love to find ways to bring the Pickle Project conversations to different countries, to learn and share perspectives.

We've got a long list of blog posts from our 2011 visits to keep you up on--everything from Greek food in eastern Ukraine and manti making in Crimea to making currant wine in L'viv-- and the debut of some video interviews. Stay tuned.

But about you--if you're in Ukraine, we'd love your help. We've greatly appreciated our guest bloggers and hope that more of you will consider joining in and sharing family stories, traditions, or what you've learned about village and urban foodways. In particular, Peace Corps volunteers, we'd love to hear from you.

And if you have ideas about what's next for us--let us know. Thanks to all of you for making 2011 an incredible year for the Pickle Project!

A Round of Thanks!

During our recent trip to Ukraine, we found a vast, beautiful, changing country of great diversity, both in communities and landscape. We saw dramatic coastlines, vast fertile fields of wheat, high mountain meadows, large cities and tiny villages, all with a wide array of foods and traditions.

However, more important are the many people we met along the way and those that continue to support the Pickle Project, without whom our work would not be possible.  Our partners are a cornerstone of the Pickle Project. Their enthusiastic on-the-ground assistance during this trip and ongoing collaborations make a great difference in our work. Specific thanks to:

· Ihor and Tania Poshyvailo from the Ivan Honchar Museum, Kyiv (with translation assistance from Valentina Bochkovska)

· Valentyna Sakhenko from Eko-Art, Donetsk

· Hannah Shelest from Promotion of Intercultural Cooperation, Odessa

· Ihor Savchuk, Sofiya Kosarchyn, Bozhena Zakaliuzhna and Olha Kotska from the Centre for Cultural Management, L’viv

Our thanks also go to a very long list (we hope we haven’t missed anyone) of wonderful people who provided translation, food and cultural research suggestions and ideas, transportation support and coordination, a place to rest our weary heads, a lovely meal with family, and so much more. In no particular order, we raise an appreciative glass to:

• The entire Leonenko family, Donetsk (and Irina, there in spirit!)
• Svitlana and Vladimir Salamatov, their family and neighbors,  Kyiv
• Neshet, Lenura, Serdar and Safie Seytaptiev, Ak-Meshet, Crimea
• Katia Burkush, Kyiv
• Barb Weiser, Peace Corps Volunteer, Simferopol/Ak-Meshet, Crimea
• Cheryl Pratt, Peace Corps Volunteer, Sovetskiy, Crimea
• Lidia Lykhach, Kyiv/US
• Galina Chumak, Donetsk Art Museum, Donetsk
• Staff at the village museum in Prelestno, Donetsk’a Oblast
• Staff at the Greek museum in Sartana, Donetsk’a Oblast
• Workers at the restaurant in Sartana,  Donetsk’a Oblast
• Lyubov, Ethnographer from the Museum of Local History, Donetsk
• Alie Yuldasheva, Simferopol
• Arzy Emirova, Crimea
• Christi-Anne Hofland, L’viv
• Eugene Chervony (L’viv) and family, L’vivska Oblast
• Ania Ivanchenko, Donetsk
• Alexandra Kirichenko, Donetsk
• Carina, Donetsk
• Natalia Bogachova, Odessa
• Olya Kik, Oksana Terteka and Halja Pavlyshyn, L’viv
• Nataliya Stryamets and the entire Stryamets family, L’viska Oblast
• Olya and Mykola in Akreshori, Ivano-Frankivs'ka oblast
• Cheesemakers Vasyl, Mykolya, Mykolya and others
• All the market vendors everywhere!

Of course, last but certainly not least, we also extend our warmest gratitude to our Kickstarter backers, as well as key supporting partners Shelburne Farms and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, that enable us to conduct this vital fieldwork, continue to expand our network and further build the Pickle Project!

Market Report, Simferopol, July 2011

We've already moved on after a terrific time in Simferopol but wanted to post these market pictures.  Above, one of the Korean salad vendors (I believe most of these vendors or their families originally came to the Soviet Union from North Korea to study).  In addition to the carrot salad above,  kimchee,  tofu and other salads were all gorgously arrayed in her case.

Simferopol is the only place we've seen plov cooked at a market.  It's a rice dish, a bit like paella in that it's cooked outside in a large flat pan, and is a food associated here with Crimean Tatars, a dish they brought back from their forced exile in Uzbekistan.

Shashlik, or shish kebabs, is associated with picnics and outdoor eating all over Ukraine.  But here in Simferopol was the only market where we've seen little outdoor restaurants for shashlik in the market.

The shashlik vendors here had long, narrow, specially-constructed charcoal grills, exactly the width of the skewer.  Easy to cook!

This young girl was working at her family's shashlik stand.

Red chilis--not as common a sight in more northern markets.  Also in Simferopol, because it's on a peninsula surrounded by the sea, there seemed to be many more fish vendors, selling a wide variety of fish, both fresh and smoked or dried.

And of course, what would any market be without fresh fruit or vegetable sellers.  Here, we buy beautiful fresh, fragrant basil.

Overall, the market somehow seemed to have a more southern feel, more outdoors in some way.

Coming up in our next market report:  Odessa.  Stay tuned!

What do you eat for Thanksgiving in Crimea?

Pumpkin manti of course!  Peace Corps Volunteer Barb Weiser shares this post about making pumpkin manti with her neighbor Lenura in preparation for a Peace Corps Thanksgiving that combined American and Crimean traditions.  Thanks Barb and Lenura!

For my contribution to the dinner, I asked Lenura to help me make pumpkin filled manti, a Crimean Tatar dish. Of course, it was really the other way around—she made them and I helped—mostly folding the manti into their intricate little shapes. Manti are a steamed dumpling or ravioli, traditionally filled with meat but sometimes with pumpkin and onions as we did this time, or other fillings. The real art to making manti is the crust. Composed of only flour and water and a small amount of salt, it is rolled out to a thin crust.

I was amazed how quickly Lenura was able to take a ball of dough and turn it into a perfectly round, very large and thin crust, ready to be cut into squares for the filling. Folding the manti into the proper shape with the filling inside is a precise maneuver, but easy to master—even I was able to learn it!

Then the manti are placed onto stacking trays in a stove top steamer (brought from Uzbekistan—it was Neshet’s mother’s) and 30 minutes later you have beautiful delicious steamed manti, usually served with a dollop of butter or sour cream.

Correction:  I had earlier posted a recipe here that didn't quite reflect Lenura's.  Barb's comment below sent me further afield on the Internet to  discover that the manti Lenura made is perhaps a combination of two fascinating traditions.  Turkish manti have an egg dough and are boiled, like Ukrainian pelmeni or its many variations, but the steamed manti with no egg in the dough is from Central Asia, most often described as from Uzbekistan.   And of course, that combination reflects the Crimean Tatars' history of origins, deportation and return. 

You can find a recipe for lamb-filled manti, steamed with no egg in the dough, on the food blog, Anna's Recipe Box.  Anna describes Uzbek food as the food she grew up with and includes recipes for other Uzbek foods as well.  Sopressata, another food blog, also has a recipe for Uzbek dumplings, with an egg in the dough and fried.  But she also describes how to make a pumpkin filling for you to try.

Across time and across space, we make recipes our own and family food traditions continually evolve.  The museum person in me, who thinks about artifacts, sees so much, so many stories embedded in that simple steamer,  brought home to Crimea by Lenura's mother-in-law.  Thanks again Barb, for sharing!

It's a Wedding!

Barb Wieser, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Crimea continues to share her experiences living--and eating--  in a Crimean Tatar settlement outside Simferopol.  You can read about a pre-wedding feast here, but below, the wedding! 

In the Crimean Tatar tradition, there are two weddings—one given by the bride’s family for her family and friends and one by the groom’s family for his family and friends, and even the bride and groom’s parents don’t go to both. These aren’t wedding ceremonies, but rather lavish parties which take place one night apart. And these two parties happen even if they all live in the same neighborhood. And somewhere in there is the actual ceremony and registration, the registration taking place at a “registration house” which we might call a wedding chapel, and the religious ceremony in this case at the mosque in the Khan’s Palace in Bakchseray. And even both families don’t attend these events—at least I know Maia and Server (my neighbors, the groom’s parents) didn’t.

... I spent almost the whole day at the neighbors, helping them prepare food for the wedding celebration that night where 250 people were expected. It was to be held at a restaurant, but the restaurant was only providing the meat dishes, and we all prepared the salads, cold cuts, etc. There were at least fifteen women or more working away at Maia’s—relatives, friends, and neighbors. I was on the backyard crew as we first sliced mounds of eggplant which were then fried in a large wok type pan over an open fire.

Later they were smeared with fresh garlic and mayonnaise and rolled up with chopped tomatoes inside and a sprig of parsley sticking out (top picture).  Quite lovely and very tasty. Went on to chopping artificial crab, cucumbers, peppers, olives, cheese for salads, and slicing huge chunks of cheese and sausages, taking a few breaks for beer and coffee (not combined!), and of course, talking and laughing the whole time. I really couldn’t follow the conversations, and as least some of them were in Crimean Tatar, but I loved being with everyone anyhow, participating in the work of the wedding.

We finally finished after about five hours, and all the food was hauled over to the wedding place. So much of the wedding was like wedding receptions we know in the States—food, drinking, music, dancing—all the basics. And here is what was different, what it made it a uniquely Crimean Tatar wedding:

For one thing, the food. There was soooo much of it, not enough room on the tables, and it kept coming all night. Many different salads, plates of cheeses and sausages and some kind of traditional meal jelly, chunks of bread, platters of camca (pastries stuffed with meat), chunks of mutton with potatoes, and a sort of breaded and fried ground meat that I forgot the name of. Also, each table had bottles of vodka, wine, juice, and water.

And then there was the music. I had heard about Crimean Tatar wedding music, indeed preserving its traditions is one of the missions of the NGO I have worked with, but apart from the music drifting out of the wedding tents in Ak Mechet, I had never really listened to it or seen it performed. I think it is what we would recognize as Turkish music but with a kind of joyousness to it. And the musicians were just fabulous—a violinist, saxophonist, accordion player, drummer, trumpet player, and maybe one more. I kept thinking that to hire a band like that for a wedding in the States would be a fortune. And that is the really interesting part of it all—the musicians are paid by people dancing with members of the wedding party. First, the sister and brother of the groom—people lined up to dance with them for a few minutes and give them some cash. Later, a pair of elderly twin aunts in identical dresses, two young men, and then finally the bride and groom. In between this dancing, there was general dancing that everyone joined in. Crimean Tatars do love to dance!

A Family Feast in Crimea

Barb Wieser is a Peace Corps volunteer at the Gasprinsky Library in Simferopol and lives outside the city in a Crimean Tatar settlement.  Crimean Tatars have a long history on the Crimea Peninsula but, in a stunning display of ethnic cleansing, Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar population on a single day in 1944, sending hundreds of thousands to Uzbekistan and other distant Soviet republics, with as many as half the population dying en route and in the following months.  But the end of the Soviet Union meant the opportunity for Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland, now a part of Ukraine, and the Crimean Tatar population in Crimea now numbers more than 250,000.  Despite deportation and cultural repression, the Crimean Tatars preserved many of their own traditions.  Barb was generous enough to share her experience preparing for a pre-wedding Crimean Tatar feast. 

Abdul, the oldest son of my landlords, Server and Maia, is getting married September 18th. There has been much talk and preparations for the wedding for quite some time. I am invited, of course, and I have been looking forward to attending my first time to a Crimean Tatar wedding! By all accounts, they are quite the event, and include all night eating, dancing, and toasting. Despite the fact that Crimean Tatars are Muslims, they still do a lot of drinking, kind of like the Turks. The joke is that there is nothing in the Koran about not drinking vodka.  Two weekends ago there was a large gathering at Maia and Server's house, a traditional part of the pre-wedding ritual where the two families exchange presents, and the imam comes and blesses the couple. 45 guests were expected: relatives, neighbors, friends and many of the relatives showed up the night before and spent the weekend.

Earlier in the week I had offered to help with the cooking, so I spent much of Friday next door in the kitchen with Maia and her sisters, daughter, and mother, chopping vegetables and meat, getting ready for the early morning feast preparation the next day.  One of the traditions in Muslim culture for a large ritual gathering such as this is to slaughter a goat, or in the case of the Crimean Tatars, a sheep, to provide meat for all the dishes. Maia had told me that her brother-in-law was bringing a sheep to slaughter on Friday, but somehow the reality of that hadn't sunk in until I came home from work Friday afternoon and glanced into the back yard, and there was a sheep, laying under the tree, staring at me with his woeful (or so I felt) eyes. I really didn't want to be present for the actual slaughter, so I disappeared into my house for awhile. When I came out later, the brother-in-law and nephew were hacking away at the sheep carcass. Two cooking fires had been started and large wok-looking pans were placed on them to cook the food needed for the feast. Later that evening, a delicious mutton soup was made for the neighbors and relatives who had gathered to help with food preparations.

After watching them for awhile, I went inside and started helping the sisters chop and peel vegetables--mounds of carrots, onions, potatoes, garlic--taking out time to have coffee and green tea and of course, talk.   One of my other jobs that evening was grinding of sheep meat to be used to make dolmades (stuffed peppers) the following day. As I was chopping up chunks of meat to be fed into the grinder, I thought of that living creature whose eyes I had looked into not so long ago, and whose body I now held in my hands and was making preparations to eat. Not since I was a child on my grandparents farm and watched the caged up chickens before their slaughter (one of which I let loose and got into big trouble) have I been so close to the connection between animal life and the meat I eat. Maybe it is the connection with mammal's that is so profound, as I have also frequently caught fish and killed and ate them. I just couldn't and still can't get the vision of that sheep's face from my mind. I tried to thank the sheep for giving its life so I can eat, but somehow, I don't think it is enough. But I continue to eat meat at my neighbors' homes and when I go to Crimean Tatar restaurants. Perhaps this experience will help me to remember what it is I am eating and to be consciously thankful that an animal has given its life for my food.

By the time I went next door, all the food had been prepared and the festivities were in full swing. I tried to help with serving, etc. but I was clearly to be treated as a guest and was escorted upstairs to dine with all the women. I hadn't realized that was going to happen, so I felt way underdressed for the event, but no one but me seemed to mind. Quite a feast was laid on the table. Plates of fruits, olives, cheeses, and sweets. A thick mutton soup was served and then the dolmades along with leposhka, the traditional Crimean Tatar bread. Afterwords, there were platters of cookies, cakes, and candies, and tea and coffee were served. It is the Crimean Tatar tradition to serve first Turkish coffee and then green tea. When I asked about this, someone told me it was because in Crimea before the deportation, people only drank coffee. But in Uzbekistan coffee wasn't available, so they drank green tea. So when people came back to Crimea, they began to serve both!

Finally I went back to my house, enriched by yet another Crimean Tatar experience and full of love for this wonderful culture I have found myself in.

Thanks, Barb, for sharing this.  More posts from Peace Corps Volunteers to come, and of course, all of our Pickle Project readers are invited to share their stories and memories about food traditions in Ukraine.