Sunflowers, Illuminated

Everything is Illuminated, sourced http://hotpotofcoffee.tumblr.com

By now, via screen or page, it seems everyone has taken in the vast, almost magical fields of sunflowers in Jonathon Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. Love or loathe Everything is Illuminated (not to cop out but I find myself squarely on the middle ground, except where Eugene Lutz is concerned.), it set an imagination of the Ukrainian countryside as a sunny, golden sea. 

I must admit, there is something sort of dreamy or wistful about sunflowers, their vibrant yellow color, the way they are said to lift their heavy heads together, following the sun across the sky. (This tracking of the sun is called heliotropism but there appears to be lack of consensus as to whether sunflowers are true heliotrophs or maybe only in early life stages. As a child of the American Midwest, I swear that I have witnessed this. Any sunflower scientists out there that can clarify?) 

From train window, central Ukraine, photo courtesy of pickle pal Linda Knudsen McAusland

In the genus Helianthus (sound familiar?) with sunchokes, sunflowers originate in the Americas but were brought to Europe by those intrepid Spaniards in the 16^th Century.  According to Cullinaria, edited by Marion Trutter (2006), sunflowers came to the Dnieper Valley with Peter the Great, after a trip to Western Europe in the mid 1500s. Peter, who was something of a sunflower aficionado, was fond of their bright colors but they soon emerged as an important food source. 

Sunflowers, соняшник in Ukrainian, are grown for seeds, which are pressed for oil or cracked and roasted as a food stuff for people and animals, particularly poultry. Referencing my trusty Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening (Rodale, 1971), I learned that sunflowers are highly nutritious, very rich in protein, calcium, phosphorus, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin and are an important source of linoleic acid (good for hair and skin, by the way). Sunflower oil is generally cold pressed, which helps to retain the oils nutrients and vitamins.  In my experience, sunflower oil is the oil of choice among Ukrainian cooks. It complements fresh veggies, as well as meats. 

From train window, central Ukraine, photo courtesy of pickle pal Linda Knudsen McAusland

Oil production began in Ukraine around 1835 and that the Kherson and Zaporhiza regions were critical to fat supplies during the Second World War and in the Soviet Area. Overtime, sunflower oil production has remained an important economic resource in Ukraine, though the industry has struggled to keep pace with crop resistance and industry standards. All that said, according to this recent post from PR Newswire, Ukraine now produces a quarter of world’s sunflower oil, comprising 51% of the global export market for the commodity. Interestingly, India is the top consumer of Ukraine’s sunflower oil. A 15% decline in production is anticipated for Ukraine’s sunflower oil production over the next year, based on adverse weather projections.

Sunflower seeds at Odessa's Central Market, photo by Linda

Whole sunflower seeds are a very popular Ukrainian snack and are found studding breads and sweets. Markets stalls feature a dizzying array of varieties and preparations. On street corners, kerchiefed grannies sell sunflower seeds for birds.

Boy’s Eye View

This post is the second in a series about the distinct Greek communities of Mariupol, a region and oblast in eastern Ukraine, near the Sea of Azoz. Special thanks to Yangnecheer family and Galina and Carrina.

Under bright blue skies, the fruit trees were flourishing with bright red cherries. As we ambled the lanes of the Greek village of Sartana, we admired the tidy, brightly colored houses, fence rows and thriving kitchen gardens we passed. Chatting idly with a friend in English, we heard a friendly little “hello” from behind a cloud of green leaves. Following this welcoming voice, we met the charming 11-year-old Vova. Vova lives in Sartana with his sister, Irina (21), her husband, Alexander (25), and their children, little Tatiana (1) and Varvara (2.5).

The family was hanging laundry in the patio, as we strolled by. Alexander told us that he is from a Greek family and has lived in Sartana his whole life. He said that, during the harvesting months, the family spends much of their summer tending the garden and preserving the food they grow for the winter months.

With a shy smile and generous nature, Vova, gave us a tour of their garden. They raise cucumbers, potatoes, beets, cabbages (two rotations), onions, squashes, eggplants, carrots and an array of herbs, including parsley, chervil (!) and dill.

Walnut and cherry trees line one end of the garden, the other flanked with bushes of raspberries, gooseberries and currents. Grapevines lace the fence between their patio and garden, where jars were set out for ongoing preservation of the summer’s bounty. Just the day before, the family had made raspberry jam and pickles.

As we explored the garden, Vova picked the perfect gooseberries, passing them to me to enjoy and occasionally popping one into his own mouth too. He described the progress of each vegetable in the garden, thoughtfully describing the desired growing conditions of each plant with impressive insight.

He expressed concern about the season’s meager harvest of apricots and apples. “Last year, people kept all the honey for themselves. So, this year, there are not so many bees. There are not enough to pollinate all the fruit trees.” “But” he said smiling, “this year has been pretty good for berries” he explained. “The raspberries are much sweeter than last year.”

Who are Your Human Links in the Food Chain?

Recently I gave a talk to a local community group here in the Catskills about the Pickle Project. As I showed pictures of fresh meat on long counters in open air markets (above, an oxtail) and big buckets of fresh sour cream, one of the audience members asked about the safety of unrefrigerated meat and other foods in Ukraine.

That’s a question many of us ask as we see those open-air markets, but increasingly, it’s a question Americans ask about our own food supply and the answers, interestingly, may be found in a place like Ukraine. Since the publication of Upton Sinclair’s  The Jungle, more than one hundred years ago,  “food safety” has been defined as “bacteria control” in the United States. But today, the threats to our food supply exceed microbes and include broader issues now defined as food security:  access to food, food and water safety,  genetically modified crops,  and, in an ever-growing global economy,  understanding where in the world our food comes from and how it is grown, processed and shipped.  Interestingly, cultures that never abandoned open-air markets --- and the food supply system that these markets support --- hold the answers to today’s crisis.

In the United States, we hope (and perhaps only hope) that government food regulations make the food we buy safe to eat.  But recent contaminations and ongoing budget cuts make that protection harder to believe.  Ukrainians, however, have no such illusions about the government’s ability to protect the food supply.

Ukraine’s recent history has left no citizen with few beliefs that any government can be trusted to feed its citizenry.   In 19322-33, Stalin created what is known in Ukrainian as  Holodomor,  the Great Famine,  sending troops to guard  the harvests, and ensure that every morsel was exported out of Ukraine as a way to ensure the unruly republic's obedience.  The real result was the starvation and death of  millions of Ukrainians.  During World War II battles fought in Ukraine devastated the agricultural landscape and starved hundreds of thousands more.   The Soviet Union’s efforts at collectivizing farms meant that eventually, fewer and fewer products appeared in the market as production decreased for a host of complicated reasons.  There is of course, also considerable concern about food contaminated from nuclear fallout from the incident at Chernobyl 25 years ago.  As recently as last summer, I was advised never to buy mushrooms on the street in the capital, Kyiv,  for fears that they had come from the contaminated region.

As Ukraine celebrates its 20 years of independence,  food is now widely available, but rampant corruption has continued the climate of distrust generated in Soviet times.  The average Ukrainian citizen does not believe that the government can or would protect the food supply in any way.  

Because of all of this, Ukrainians have long since taken responsibility for the food that they feed their families.    They’ve found two solutions.

First, grow it yourself.    In villages and towns, every house has a garden.  It’s not just for show.  They are big gardens.  The front yard of a house might be filled with potato plants and out back,  stretch rows of garlic, onions, beets, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more.  A clutch of fruit trees, cherry, apricot, apple, join the blackberry and blueberry bushes.   Full-time village residents (a rapidly aging, declining, number) might also have a cow or two, a few chickens and geese, and maybe even a pig.  

An increasing middle class in Ukrainian cities is finding the income to purchase a “dacha,” a vacation house in a village.  But these dachas aren’t just for relaxation, they’re a place where after the end of a busy work week, city dwellers drive to, put on their old clothes, , and weed, water, pick and preserve.  Full-time villagers and part-time residents both grow food for their extended families. Many young people still live at home, relying on mothers or grandmothers to produce home-cooked meals every day.  Few young people cook at all (“We have other hobbies,”  one said laughingly).  But when your food comes from your own family garden, you know who produces your food. 

Second, buy your food from someone with whom you have a personal, yet commercial, relationship with.  You can’t just buy it from any vendor.  At the main city market in Odessa there are dozens of women selling dairy products.  But according to my friend Natalia, she only buys from “her” vendor,  the woman with whom she has established a personal relationship.   That way, she knows that Irina comes from a village two hours away, twice a week, with cheese made from cow and goat milk, and fresh sour cream.  She knows the person who produces her food. 

Although Americans want to have a personal relationship with their food, that sort of intimacy requires rethinking the ways we live.

Is it possible to replant the lawn with vegetable gardens and re-apportion family time  away from soccer games and TV in order to tend those gardens? Is there a communal garden or CSA that could use help? Or is it more feasible to shop consistently from vendors and take the time to get to know them?   It’s definitely more work.  Planting, tending and harvesting a garden is a hard thing to do after a day in the office although Ukrainian women seem to balance work, family and home in a way I admire. 

Is it possible to become less used to food on demand?  When you eat what you or your known farmer grows, it means that at particularly times of the year,  you don’t eat certain things.  At my friend Anya’s dacha,  we had okroshka,  a cold buttermilk soup that celebrated, in her family, the arrival of the first cucumbers of the year.

Governments at all levels, in both the United States and Ukraine often make this revised thinking more difficult.  In Simferopol Ukraine, the city government forbade street vendors from selling.  This appears to be honored a bit in the breach,  but for many people, it meant that city residents had to travel a bit further for food, and pay a bit more.  As I describe farmers’ markets here to Ukrainian friends, there’s always a bit of puzzlement over the idea that they are once a week affairs.   In the United States, the tangle of regulations about both producing and selling food at markets and elsewhere prevents many would-be growers and producers from entering the marketplace.

The future is cloudy for both American and Ukrainian eaters.  We expect our governments to work for a common good and in both countries, the common good is often a highly debatable topic. There needs to be a transparency about food regulation and a willingness to both protect the food supply and encourage local webs of relationships.

I can imagine a future here in the US where a greater percentage of us eat seasonably and sustainably.  But I can equally imagine a future of factory farms and contaminated food.  In Ukraine, as the McDonalds are always jammed with young people and fewer young women (and virtually no young men) learn how to cook,  the centuries old tie to the land may be broken. But I can also imagine a Ukraine where cooks still make the perfect pickle.

Note:  over the past month, I've been taking an online food writing course with Molly O'Neill.  Special thanks to her and my fellow foodwriters in the workshop for their thoughts and great advice on this article.

Market Report: October 11, Kyiv

The market really felt like fall yesterday, with summer abundance still intact but the sense of cold weather beginning to close in.  What was for offer?

Fava or cranberry beans, chives, dill,  mushrooms and peppers from one vendor;  mushrooms, rose hips, kalina and ribena (all both fresh and dried).

Squash, beans, garlic and shallots;  and popcorn on the cob, which my friend Gwen remembered from growing up in the Midwest.

One vendor had at least four different kinds of fresh mushrooms, while another had a duck or goose for sale.   And of course, many vendors with staples for the long Ukrainian winter:  potatoes, beets, cabbage, onions, carrots and other root vegetables.

And just in case borscht doesn't keep you warm enough, here's Gwen with the babushka selling beautifully hand-knitted socks.

Harvest Comes Early to Ukraine

I'm very pleased to share this guest post and photos by Fran Cary, a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. Fran lives and works in Starobilsk.  Luba, her friend and neighbor is like many Ukrainians, intensely  knowledgeable about her garden and dedicated to preserving the fruits of her work.  Fran's thoughtful commentary places Luba in the context of both time and place.  Thank you both Fran and Luba!

Harvest is coming early to Ukraine.  It's the intense, prolonged hot weather and lack of rain.  Luba's garden storage area in her barn, a common feature of village homesteads, is loaded with tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and herbs, drying out so they can be cured, sliced, diced, spiced, bottled and preserved.   

The grapes look beautiful, but Luba says they will not be very tasty. Too dry. The apples are fairly plentiful but not very large.  The plums are turning deep purple but many are dropping early.  There are five blushing peaches on her newly planted tree that she is guarding with her life.  Last year the apricots were bountiful, and Luba spent hours cutting and drying them and making jam, preserves and compot (fruit juice);  this year there are hardly any apricots.   

Luba , who is a professional accountant, says, "During the day I work with my head, at night I work with my body and soul," and  she loves it.  It's a balance between the mental and physical that many of us, in today's post-industrial and technological world, do not have.  In Starobilsk, and most rural villages throughout Ukraine, it is a typical pattern.     

 

Luba's garden is medium-sized, but if you have ever worked a plot of land you know what hard work it is.  Natalia's garden is huge, three times the size of Luba's.  When Natalia is not teaching English at the University, she works the land with her husband and two college-aged sons. When I was in training in Chernigov, Valya and Nikolai, who lived in a large Soviet-style apartment building, went early every morning to their garden plot in the country where they grew vegetables and fruits, and Nikolai hunted for mushrooms.  Some gardens are large enough so their owners can grow their own food and sell the surplus in the marketplace, at shops, roadside stands, and bazaars.  Right now, on the road to Lugansk, for example, it's hard to resist the melons and autumn vegetables.   

Luba's garden and lifestyle make me think of the work of British historian E.P.Thompson and his many followers who explored the changing relationship to time in industrial and pre-industrial societies,  the centuries-long transition from economies based on farmers, merchants and craftspeople to those based on industries, beginning with the textile factories, which required a disciplined labor force tied to clock time. 

Before Thompson there was Karl Marx, who famously argues that the industrial revolution polarized society into the bourgeoise, those who owned the means of production, and the proletariat, those who performed the labor necessary to extract something valuable from the means of productions.  These studies of the transition from agrarian to industrial life, and likewise the transition from slavery to freedom, constitute a fascinating body of scholarship, worldwide, a global village of international studies.     

Luba's 9 to 5 day job is measured by the time-clock, but her work in the garden is pre-industrial.  It is measured by the tasks required at different times in the growing cycle. She wakes up at sunrise to work in her garden for a few hours, then comes home from her day job and works til sundown in the garden, each task determined by the crop and the season, a natural cycle of life.   

In the rural villages of Ukraine, some elements of a pre-industrial society still exist.  Farmers, merchants and craftspeople dominate the economy, although large international companies and technology are fast rising to overtake them.  It feels like what it must have been life in America at the turn of the century with the rise of the trusts and big business, and the triumph of capitalism.  The growing and dirge-like complaints about “oligarchy” embody the resistance and regret at this development, which now seems inevitable, irresistible, unstoppable.   

Because for village people in the post-Soviet world, freedom still means owning your own land, growing your own food, being self-sufficient, being your own boss.  It's the Ukrainian equivalent of "40 acres and a mule," the dream of former slaves after the Civil War and during Reconstruction into the 20th century.   There is a fierce resistance to “clocking-in” to work for the profit of someone else.    

Luba's work exemplifies this lifestyle.  I think it is doomed to extinction. I wonder how long it can last?
 

White Borscht?

Ukrainians love soup--and hardly a day goes by that they don't eat some.  And it's not Campbells, out of the can, but homemade.   Most familiar is a red borscht, but when I visited Anya's family's dacha, her mother Luda made a delicious soup, okroshka, also called white borscht.   It was served cool (by being kept in the root cellar) and the ingredients included buttermilk, cucumbers, potatoes, hard-boiled egg and spring onions.  Perfectly light and refreshing on a hot day. 

Interestingly, Anya tells me that in Russia, there is also a soup called okroshka,  but it is very different--made with kvas (a fermented beverage made from dark bread) and dried fish.  I'm sure it's tasty,  but Luda's homemade Ukrainian version was great.  Although now they eat it at the start of summer because cucumbers are always available in markets, Anya remembers when it was almost a celebration--the dish made when the first cucumbers arrived in the garden.

Babushka Natasha's Garden

This past weekend, my friend Anya invited me to her parent's dacha in Myrivka, a village about an hour's drive southeast of Kyiv.   Her mother Luda was gracious enough to take me to meet a couple villagers, so I could see a bit more of village life.  Above is Babushka Natasha--she's 85 and lives with her husband, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, who's 89.  She gave me a tour of her garden, which is a great look into how one small woman feeds her family--and finds beauty--here in a village.

But first, her yard.  Village houses here all have fences and gates shutting them off from the street--but inside the small yard is where flower gardens most often are.  There were lilac bushes,  many different kinds of tulips, iris just starting to come up and more.  All kinds of flowers! I loved that her green thumb and love for flowers extended inside, to this beautiful geranium, and to beautiful rushnyky embroidered and cross-stitched by her which she carefully brought out to show us.

But now to the business end of the garden--the kitchen garden.  When I think of a kitchen garden, I imagine a small  plot, planted with herbs, etc (possibly too much time spent in and around US historic houses).  But here, kitchen gardens are serious things.   Here's an overall view:

Yes, that entire plot, including the wheat on the left, is her garden.  What's she growing?  Here's a partial list as I remember:

• lots of potatoes
• onions
• carrots
• pumpkins
• tomatos
• garlic
• cucumbers
• turnips or rutabagas
• wheat

Ukrainians love fruit and fruit trees so Babushka Natasha also had a grape arbor and numerous fruit trees:  apple, apricot, cherry and pear.  Also raspberry bushes and the fruit that symbolizes Ukraine to many:  the kalyna.  Kalyna is a red berry, actually a kind of cranberry, much written about in poetry and song.    All these things--from the fruit trees and garden, are things that can be canned or put down in the root cellar for the winter to sustain Natasha and her husband until spring.

I'm a quite a bit of a lazy, very sporadic gardener myself and part of what was so impressive here (aside from the incredible black earth) was how perfect every single row in this garden was--not a weed to be found.  Natasha awakens every morning before sunrise this time of year and works all day long in the garden and around the house.   She was living proof of the time and effort it takes to really be sustainable in terms of food production.   And she's not the only one.  I looked across the fields and saw many women out at work, as the light began to fade into evening.

As we said our goodbyes,  Natasha thanked me for coming, and asked us to wait a moment--she then returned with a present for me--a plastic bag with a dozen or so fresh eggs gently nestled inside.   I rode with them on my lap back to Kyiv,  and the next morning, my poached eggs served as a reminder of Babushka Natasha, her generous, hard-working spirit, and her wonderful garden.