KGB Pickles

Kim McCray, returned Peace Corps volunteer, ends her food trilogy with a pickle memory.  Thanks Kim, for sharing, and Peace Corps volunteers,  we'd love to hear from more of you!

 

This is the Pickle Project, so it is only fitting that I end this list with a pickle memory. 

Toward the end of my service I agreed to participate in “Adopt-A-Cluster”, a practice developed by Peace Corps to encouraged seasoned, veteran volunteers to visit the brand-new trainee groups, (clusters), at their training sites.  Because the trainees had been interacting almost exclusively with Peace Corps staff and host-country nationals up to this point, getting the opportunity to pick the brains of current volunteers and get feel for the practicalities of Peace Corps life beyond the technicalities of training was invaluable.

So, with fond memories of the volunteer who had adopted my cluster two years before, I agreed to help with the project and boarded a train to Kyiv and then caught a bus and headed north to the city of Chernihiv.  A Ukrainian Peace Corps staff member met me at the bus stop on an especially cold and dark night and explained to me the plans for the next day as we walked quickly down a bumpy unlit sidewalk and then weaved our way through a maze of Soviet high-rise apartment buildings.  Soon enough we arrived at our destination and rang the buzzer.  A young woman answered the door, and pattering up behind her came an elderly woman. We were introduced – her name was Luibov – and I learned that Luibov would be hosting me for the next two nights.  The Peace Corps staff member then gave me a piece of paper with directions to where I was supposed to go the next morning, and left.  Luibov was cheerful and I was very pleased to find that she spoke only Russian (I had been trained and continued to study Russian, but often heard Ukrainian or the Russian-Ukrainian blend “Surjik” at my site, so communicating with someone who only used Russian was always a relief).  It was late however, so we did not talk much; she showed me to the living room where I was to sleep on the couch, and said goodnight.

The next morning I found a typical Ukrainian breakfast spread for me on the table – buttered bread, slices of cheese and sausage, peach juice, and a bowl of pickles.  Ten minutes later, I had eaten three large dill pickles and packed two more for my lunch. They were very simply the best pickles I have ever had in my life.  Perfectly crunchy and tart but with a sweetness I’d never tasted before or since.  That night I cleaned the bowl once again and asked for the recipe.  In typical Ukrainian fashion, Luibov didn’t write it down but instead tried to explain the process verbally.  I knew I was in trouble when early on in her explanation she said “…then I add that brown seed…I don’t remember what it’s called…” 
 

Several minutes later she finished giving me her “recipe”, and while I had a vague notion of what she had done, I definitely had not grasped enough details to duplicate her process.  Now, more than three years later, I remember nothing about that recipe except the brown mystery seed.

The next morning, as I was packing my bag to leave, Luibov approached me with a photo in a frame and a box and told me to sit down.  I was worried that if I didn’t leave soon I might miss my train, but I agreed to stay a few more minutes.  We sat down and Luibov opened the box. Inside were medals, newspaper clippings, coins, and various other knick-knacks.  She asked me if I knew what they were and I guessed army memorabilia, as medals from the Great Patriotic War (WWII) are commonplace souvenirs in Ukraine.  She smiled and shook her head and then showed me the photo. “That is me, and that is my husband” she said. The picture was of a couple standing on a stage in some sort of official ceremony. “We were in the KGB, the both of us, for almost thirty years. This is us receiving an award for our excellent service.”  

Now of course, having lived in a former Soviet country for more than two years, I am sure that this was not my first interaction with someone who had been affiliated with the KGB, but this was the first time I’d been made aware of it.  The shock factor hit me as I realized that I had spent two nights under the roof of a 30 year KGB veteran.  Luibov then went on to joke that in all those 30 years she had never actually met an American until now.   “Look at these things Kim!” she exclaimed as she pawed through the box, “I cannot believe you are here in my home!” I shook my head in disbelief as well and we continued to laugh about it as I grabbed my bag and walked down the hall towards the front door.  I thanked her for her hospitality and headed out. I hadn’t made it more than a few steps when she called to me and scurried after me, holding out plastic baggy. I opened it – inside was a jar of pickles. Delicious KGB pickles.   

Top:  Kim and Luibov

Bottom:   Pyotre Petrovich Konchalovsky (b.Ukraine, 1876-1956) Still Life with Teapot and Breakfast. 1946

Lviving On A Jet Plane

 
A final guest post from Caleb Zigas, traveling companion for our October Conversations. 

So after four conversations, three train rides, at least 2 pounds of salo consumed and countless liters of vodka (the best was the homemade kind) what are the takeaways?

In writing about travel, and writing about it in the first person no less, and in a format like a blog even more, I think it’s important to recognize that one most likely learns far more about one’s self through travel than one possibly can about one place. Place is too nebulous. Too large. Too all-consuming. I didn’t eat enough, or from everywhere. I didn’t eat in anyone’s home, share a meal with a person who cooked it, or stumble into an expected delight enough times to give a sense of place. But I did eat wonderful food, much of it home-cooked, and I did listen and talk quite a bit about not only the food but also the act of cooking and consuming it.

When I left the States I felt, as I often feel, conflicted about the work that I do. Without boring you too much with insights into my own personal struggles, it’s enough to know that I do what I do because I believe the world can be a better place. I often think that one of the main factors in preventing such betterment is the dominance of capitalism, yet what I do simply aspires to make poor people better capitalists. But what of this thought in a post-Communist society?

The irony, or really it’s not irony but the realization, is that small business can be powerful. In the many conversations we had, meals we shared and foods we tried, the idea of small business was rarely on the forefront of anyone’s minds. The questions I ended my discussion with (What foods do you think you could sell, for instance) often led to blank stares and boring conversation. The explanations provided were often that government regulation, corruption and taxation were too daunting of tasks for small business to have any traction in this place. And so small business begins to feel powerful.

I imagine a group of piroshky selling women banding together with a solid brand and making a living for themselves. Or the subsistence farmers creating value-added products with regional variations in order to maintain the life style that their sons and daughters are abandoning. While their sons and daughters work in cities and earn money in order to purchase the foods they miss from the village. And while our conversations seemed to state that this was not, yet, a reality, some part of me feels that we simply didn’t find the right places to have that conversation.

If there was no belief in that kind of opportunity there would be no Pizzata Hata and no Kompot. There would be no informal vending, no funnel-cake hot dogs, no coffee shops and no tandoori-like fired breads. By the end of this trip I’ve come to believe, again, in the power of small business, or at least the ideal of it, the notion, to provide some kind of opportunity for economic freedom. It’s a concept that is utterly complicated by the rippling impact of collectivism plus oligarchy, but, perhaps for the first time in a long time, it often feels like a solution.

Given the pace of capitalism that we experienced, I’m not sure that Ukrainian capitalism currently looks any different than the malicious brand of American capitalism, rife with income inequality and lack of opportunity, that we are so quick to export. But I’m also not sure that has to be the case.

In our last conversation in Lviv, a young woman was asked if she still cooked, and she answered (like nearly everyone else we asked in the time I was there) that she did. But, she was quick to point out, instead of spending Sunday making vareniki all day long, she cooked something quick and delicious. If she were to spend an entire day, she said, she’d have friends over and they would make something they wanted… sushi.

In Lviv we ate one meal at the Salo Museum. A high-concept restaurant bar that chooses not to examine the history of this national dish but instead to focus on its future, draping models with small bits of it in artsy-soft-porn poses and offering a menu of salo based concoctions. One of which we tried—salo sushi. Like so many other things, it was imperfect, but emblematic. There is no such thing as tradition. No such taste as authentic. There is only what we are, and that is constantly changing. So salo sushi is no less Ukrainian than borscht, no matter how much we miss the borscht our grandmother’s made.

What can be more powerful than the memory of that borscht, or the taste of any other number of foods, is the power to choose the foods that we make and eat. Ukraine, like so many of us, is in a struggle to define that future for themselves, and it’s one you can see, hear and taste on the streets and in the markets every day. I will remember, for a long time, the taste of that borscht and the taste of that sushi, and I will wonder, for a long time, what it will taste like the next time I go.

Photos by Rueben Nilsson, our fellow traveler.  From top:  borscht;   cheese seller at Bessarabka market, Kyiv; salo sushi (no kidding); and Sarah, Linda and Caleb in L'viv.

Some Thoughts on the Practice of Chocolate Giving

Although Valentine’s Day is not widely celebrated in Ukraine, all of the chocolates being exchanged remind me of the Ukrainian penchant for giving chocolates. I learned about the practice of chocolate giving at the end of my first trip to Ukraine. As a colleague arrived to drive us to the airport, he presented me with an enormous box of chocolates. (It really was a huge box of chocolates! Perhaps, 18 inches long and 12 inches wide (40cm X 30cm). I had to hand-carry it because it would not fit in my suitcase..)

Now, after living in Ukraine, I have come to understand chocolate giving as a common ritual, sometimes charged with meaning and sometimes without expectation whatsoever. My friend, Katarynka, once told me that Ukrainians love chocolates but that they really love chocolates in boxes. This, she said, is because, during the Soviet era, boxes were fancifully decorated and typically came from abroad, which was considered more extravagant. Giving of any gifts, she explained, was and, arguably, still is a strategy for securing personal economic and political livelihood. Conversely, another friend, Natalia, who is a bit younger and grew up in a post-Socialist Ukraine, told me that she thinks it is “social” to bring good chocolates to friends or colleagues to enjoy with coffee. And, she added, they are tasty.

In her article on the culture of gift giving in contemporary St. Petersburg (And, by the way, the Pickle Project endeavors to fill the void of Ukrainian-specific food studies!) Jennifer Patico (2002) explores how the giving of small gifts, and chocolates, in particular, inform post-Socialist identities. She also further examines how these customs reflect and overlap with the social and transactional networking that was central to Soviet era life. Whereas, during the Soviet period, people drew on their connections to meet their material needs for goods and commodities, today, with a range of consumer goods available, urban Russians rely on money to achieve those ends. Now, Patico’s research suggests, gifts are used not as direct payments or bribes, but as “signs of attention” or spontaneous expressions of gratitude. They symbolize recognition that relationships are appreciated and in good standing, while reinforcing a kind of social commonality. Reflecting the variation in my friends’ responses to the chocolate question, Patico writes that gifts can be variously interpreted and that their meaning is often expressed by the choice of item selected. Boxes of chocolate (for women) and bottles of cognac (for men) are both neutral and traditional, reflecting the tastes of neither the giver nor the receiver. Nonetheless, chocolates in a decorative box are a good gift, she found, because a person would never buy a box of chocolates for themselves. Furthermore, they are frivolous, fleeting and delicious.

Regardless of the reason for the gift, Ukrainian chocolates come in a dizzying array of shapes, flavors and fillings. There are ones with poppy. And, coffee crème, almonds and crispy rice and marshmallow (delightfully called “hummingbird’s milk”) and cognac-soaked cherries and raspberry jelly. There are wafers, layered with hazelnut ganache. There are cones filled with champagne-flavored crème. My personal favorites involve the mingling of honey and almonds..

Chocolate confectionary is rather old industry in Ukraine, apparently dating back to the 18^th century. According to Ukraine.com, as L’viv emerged as an important hub of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it also became a center for confectionery. In combined celebration of this history and International Women's Day, the 3^rd Annual Chocolate Festival will take place in L’viv March 6-8, 2010.

For thoughtful academic discussion of gift-giving in Russia, see Jennifer Patico’s 2002 article “Chocolate and Cognac: Gifts and the Recognition of Social Worlds in Post-Soviet

Russia” in Ethnos 67 (3), 345-368.