I was a timid cook in Ukraine. Every woman in the country went to the same cooking school and can make soup, Borshch, ravioli, cabbage rolls, dumplings, pie and potato pancakes from scratch. I figured they spent more time in the kitchen than anywhere else. Whenever I cooked for other people I wondered, would they like it? Would they eat it? What were they thinking when they ate it?
One day while my second host family was out, I decided to make cookies. The family was at a birthday and I had stayed home to rest, so I could talk to myself in English. Sometimes it was exhausting trying to understand everything.
I used a toll house chocolate chip recipe and the small electronic timer I’d brought from America. I found flour and sugar in my host family’s cupboards. My host parents bought it in the one-ton bag variety. I mixed in baking soda and a little vanilla and went to look for eggs. I opened the refrigerator and realized we were out of eggs. “Oh,” I said, and called my mom in America. She told me to substitute oil and a little water for eggs. Then I checked the fridge again, no butter. No butter except for a chunk of chocolate butter sitting on a plate. My host mom excitedly introduced this to me the week before. It was like regular butter, except it was sweet and flavored like chocolate.
I dumped it into the mix but it didn’t seem like enough so I added some kind of fatty, homemade Crisco-like substance that I found in a jar in the back of the refrigerator. I added white chocolate and walnuts and mixed everything together. The mixture was dry so I added more water and oil until it looked like cookie dough.
I giggled as I mixed everything together because I was pretty sure these cookies were going to taste like crap.
I lit the oven. It was a gas stove and oven so not only did you have to use a lighter to light the stovetop, but you had to do the same to light the oven fuse from underneath. This was my first attempt to work the oven on my own and I was successful on the first try. I baked the cookies and felt triumphant when I pulled out the first batch and they looked like cookies. They were a little flat and they tasted a little strange from the fatty stuff but my host family liked them.
“These are delicious!” they said when they ate them. I felt mollified. I baked in Ukraine!
When I moved into my own apartment, I made pizza more times than was strictly necessary. You know how when you're living in a foreign country, and nothing makes sense, and you can't go shopping in an English-speaking store, and that one cashier wasn't very kind, and you can't order a pizza, and you start to wonder if you can really do this?
Then you make pizza.
I was asked by Sestra's family in the village, “What do you eat there where you're living alone? Sandwiches and ravioli and pizza?”
“Haha, no,” I said. “I make many things! Eggs, and potatoes, and bread and apples and... um... I don't make pizza EVERY weekend... Haha...”
I liked to experiment and simulate American dishes from raw ingredients. It made me joyful to make something that tasted like home.
One day I made compote by myself. My Koziatyn host parents had made it all the time. When I first heard about this, it sounded like some old-fashiony thing we had done in America when everyone wore bonnets and traveled in covered wagons.
It was usually water, apples with some kind of berries, and sugar. The fruit juice boiled out of the fruit and made a light juice.
I made apple compote and it was pretty tasty.
Then the next day, I made burritos. From scratch! That was a word I taught my ninth form English class. I tried to explain what a tortilla was during our discussion of American foods and even Natasha was lost.
I made tortillas and then I cooked up beans, rice and ham. I piled that into the tortilla and added cheese, a spritz of lemon and a line of Ranch dressing. It was amazing. Like the best thing I ever cooked in Ukraine. When I showed my host mom from the villlage how I made tortillas, it was difficult to convince her to make them without oil.
I also made homemade tortillas, and then fried them into chips, and made nachos.
Occasionally I tried to make Ukrainian food. I made borshch with beets, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, a little tomato sauce, water, carrots, beans and spices. Svyeta had copied down the recipe for me in Ukrainian. It was really great. Especially when I added crushed red pepper to make it a little spicy and it tasted like chili.
Once, I went to Natasha’s house to study Ukrainian and she said she had a surprise for me. She gave me something that looked like gunge on a piece of bread. I was afraid of it until I finally sniffed it. Peanuts.
She made me peanut butter. Because she wanted to please me and she was awesome and I had once told her that peanut butter didn't exist in Ukraine. And when she couldn't find any, she made some herself. And then she had to ask me what awesome meant.
“Really, really great,” I said. “Like super ‘klasno’” (which means “cool”).
I made a feast for Anya’s family, my Ukrainian best friend. I found out avocados in my town at a little vegetable shop. Anya invited me over so I made salsa, bought avocados and chicken and went over to their house to make burritos. It was a big production. I made guacamole (and used Italian seasoning mom had sent me), rice, beans, chicken (also marinated in Italian seasoning salad dressing), cheese, salsa and tortillas. The tortillas were homemade, rolled out and cooked without oil in a skillet. Anya helped me. Her sister-in-law filmed the whole thing with my new digital camera. Sasha, our other friend, grated cheese. I told them that in America, I don’t have to make tortillas, I can buy them right at the store! I felt very home-makery.
Her parents looked on with wide eyes and tentatively tried the avocado and lime. The avocado ‘didn’t taste like anything’ and the lime was sour, according to Dasha, Anya’s sister-in-law. “I said it was like lemon,” I said. She didn’t like it. Later, her dad saw the pit from the avocado and asked where it’d come from. “It’s a seed?” he said in surprise.
“Yes, it came from the avocado!” I said.
When I went to any kind of celebratory gathering in Ukraine, I brought a gift for the hostess, usually chocolate or candies. It was called “konfeti” in Ukrainian. I took off my shoes at the door. This was the custom in Ukraine because the roads were messy and dirty, not always paved. The table was already set with large saucers of Ukrainian dishes; open-faced sandwiches with fish and butter, holodets (jello meat), halubtsy, fried chicken with the bone still in, assorted mayonnaise-based salads, mashed potatoes, sausage and cheeses, potato, salo (pig fat), maybe shashliki (kebabs) if it was summer, wine and vodka.
The hosts were eager to welcome me, to treasure me, to make me feel part of them because I was American. I was an exciting thing to them. They gave me house slippers, they told me where to sit, they gave me wine. We sat and toasted the hosts, took our first shot of vodka of the night. The third toast was to women. The men stood and clinked their glasses together for us. We ate and talked. I tried to understand everything. They ask about me, why was in Ukraine, did I like it here. That was usually the first question. “Do you like it here?”
“Of course,” I said. “The people are warm and friendly and the country is beautiful.”
“And the food?” they asked.
I smiled. “I like it usually,” was my answer.
“Usually?” they asked. “Well,” I said. “I don’t like fish, and I don’t like holodets, or salo.” I shuddered when I said “holodets” and they laughed.
“Why don’t you like holodets?” they wanted to know.
“Because it’s terrible!” I said. “We don’t eat meat in jello in America!” They were delighted by my reaction and begged me to try it.
“It’s just soup, only cold,” they said. “You like soup, yes?”
“Yes, but not cold soup like this,” I said. I stood firm to my beliefs.
We continue the meal, and when my plate was empty, they pressed me to eat more. More. More. More dishes were brought out and still they said, “yeesh, yeesh (eat, eat). You must eat more. Vodka, wine, what would you like to drink?” they asked.
“I have had enough!” I tried to say, but it was not enough. I had to eat. I had to drink more. They were my hosts and they didn’t want me to go hungry, I must eat. I was bursting but still I ate. I picked at the food, dolloped another scoop of cheese and garlic salad onto a slice of bread. There was so much left on the table.
Then we had tea and coffee with chocolates and cookies. We sat around the table for hours, talking. Maybe someone started to sing. My second host mom loved this, to play a song on the piano while we all sang. Except I’d listen, because I didn’t know the words. We drank and drank and they talked and talked.
There was no possibility of finding a TV dinner in a Ukrainian supermarket. The best I could come up with was a couple boxes of “chicken cordon bleu” meals tucked behind the raw fish. And I was all, whoa there! How long had these been sitting here and were they ordered just for me? Hard to imagine any self-respecting Ukrainian woman picking those up.
“All Jessica likes to eat are potatoes, chicken and eggs,” Sestra liked to joke. She was not far from the truth because I wasn't used to cooking this much and not having any ready-made meals. Tricia helped me find a few things that were premade, like different types of varenekiy (dumplings or large pasta with fillings of potatoes, cheese or meat).
One day while my second host family was out, I decided to make cookies. The family was at a birthday and I had stayed home to rest, so I could talk to myself in English. Sometimes it was exhausting trying to understand everything.
I used a toll house chocolate chip recipe and the small electronic timer I’d brought from America. I found flour and sugar in my host family’s cupboards. My host parents bought it in the one-ton bag variety. I mixed in baking soda and a little vanilla and went to look for eggs. I opened the refrigerator and realized we were out of eggs. “Oh,” I said, and called my mom in America. She told me to substitute oil and a little water for eggs. Then I checked the fridge again, no butter. No butter except for a chunk of chocolate butter sitting on a plate. My host mom excitedly introduced this to me the week before. It was like regular butter, except it was sweet and flavored like chocolate.
I dumped it into the mix but it didn’t seem like enough so I added some kind of fatty, homemade Crisco-like substance that I found in a jar in the back of the refrigerator. I added white chocolate and walnuts and mixed everything together. The mixture was dry so I added more water and oil until it looked like cookie dough.
I giggled as I mixed everything together because I was pretty sure these cookies were going to taste like crap.
I lit the oven. It was a gas stove and oven so not only did you have to use a lighter to light the stovetop, but you had to do the same to light the oven fuse from underneath. This was my first attempt to work the oven on my own and I was successful on the first try. I baked the cookies and felt triumphant when I pulled out the first batch and they looked like cookies. They were a little flat and they tasted a little strange from the fatty stuff but my host family liked them.
“These are delicious!” they said when they ate them. I felt mollified. I baked in Ukraine!
When I moved into my own apartment, I made pizza more times than was strictly necessary. You know how when you're living in a foreign country, and nothing makes sense, and you can't go shopping in an English-speaking store, and that one cashier wasn't very kind, and you can't order a pizza, and you start to wonder if you can really do this?
Then you make pizza.
I was asked by Sestra's family in the village, “What do you eat there where you're living alone? Sandwiches and ravioli and pizza?”
“Haha, no,” I said. “I make many things! Eggs, and potatoes, and bread and apples and... um... I don't make pizza EVERY weekend... Haha...”
I liked to experiment and simulate American dishes from raw ingredients. It made me joyful to make something that tasted like home.
One day I made compote by myself. My Koziatyn host parents had made it all the time. When I first heard about this, it sounded like some old-fashiony thing we had done in America when everyone wore bonnets and traveled in covered wagons.
It was usually water, apples with some kind of berries, and sugar. The fruit juice boiled out of the fruit and made a light juice.
I made apple compote and it was pretty tasty.
Then the next day, I made burritos. From scratch! That was a word I taught my ninth form English class. I tried to explain what a tortilla was during our discussion of American foods and even Natasha was lost.
I made tortillas and then I cooked up beans, rice and ham. I piled that into the tortilla and added cheese, a spritz of lemon and a line of Ranch dressing. It was amazing. Like the best thing I ever cooked in Ukraine. When I showed my host mom from the villlage how I made tortillas, it was difficult to convince her to make them without oil.
I also made homemade tortillas, and then fried them into chips, and made nachos.
Occasionally I tried to make Ukrainian food. I made borshch with beets, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, a little tomato sauce, water, carrots, beans and spices. Svyeta had copied down the recipe for me in Ukrainian. It was really great. Especially when I added crushed red pepper to make it a little spicy and it tasted like chili.
Once, I went to Natasha’s house to study Ukrainian and she said she had a surprise for me. She gave me something that looked like gunge on a piece of bread. I was afraid of it until I finally sniffed it. Peanuts.
She made me peanut butter. Because she wanted to please me and she was awesome and I had once told her that peanut butter didn't exist in Ukraine. And when she couldn't find any, she made some herself. And then she had to ask me what awesome meant.
“Really, really great,” I said. “Like super ‘klasno’” (which means “cool”).
I made a feast for Anya’s family, my Ukrainian best friend. I found out avocados in my town at a little vegetable shop. Anya invited me over so I made salsa, bought avocados and chicken and went over to their house to make burritos. It was a big production. I made guacamole (and used Italian seasoning mom had sent me), rice, beans, chicken (also marinated in Italian seasoning salad dressing), cheese, salsa and tortillas. The tortillas were homemade, rolled out and cooked without oil in a skillet. Anya helped me. Her sister-in-law filmed the whole thing with my new digital camera. Sasha, our other friend, grated cheese. I told them that in America, I don’t have to make tortillas, I can buy them right at the store! I felt very home-makery.
Her parents looked on with wide eyes and tentatively tried the avocado and lime. The avocado ‘didn’t taste like anything’ and the lime was sour, according to Dasha, Anya’s sister-in-law. “I said it was like lemon,” I said. She didn’t like it. Later, her dad saw the pit from the avocado and asked where it’d come from. “It’s a seed?” he said in surprise.
“Yes, it came from the avocado!” I said.
When I went to any kind of celebratory gathering in Ukraine, I brought a gift for the hostess, usually chocolate or candies. It was called “konfeti” in Ukrainian. I took off my shoes at the door. This was the custom in Ukraine because the roads were messy and dirty, not always paved. The table was already set with large saucers of Ukrainian dishes; open-faced sandwiches with fish and butter, holodets (jello meat), halubtsy, fried chicken with the bone still in, assorted mayonnaise-based salads, mashed potatoes, sausage and cheeses, potato, salo (pig fat), maybe shashliki (kebabs) if it was summer, wine and vodka.
The hosts were eager to welcome me, to treasure me, to make me feel part of them because I was American. I was an exciting thing to them. They gave me house slippers, they told me where to sit, they gave me wine. We sat and toasted the hosts, took our first shot of vodka of the night. The third toast was to women. The men stood and clinked their glasses together for us. We ate and talked. I tried to understand everything. They ask about me, why was in Ukraine, did I like it here. That was usually the first question. “Do you like it here?”
“Of course,” I said. “The people are warm and friendly and the country is beautiful.”
“And the food?” they asked.
I smiled. “I like it usually,” was my answer.
“Usually?” they asked. “Well,” I said. “I don’t like fish, and I don’t like holodets, or salo.” I shuddered when I said “holodets” and they laughed.
“Why don’t you like holodets?” they wanted to know.
“Because it’s terrible!” I said. “We don’t eat meat in jello in America!” They were delighted by my reaction and begged me to try it.
“It’s just soup, only cold,” they said. “You like soup, yes?”
“Yes, but not cold soup like this,” I said. I stood firm to my beliefs.
We continue the meal, and when my plate was empty, they pressed me to eat more. More. More. More dishes were brought out and still they said, “yeesh, yeesh (eat, eat). You must eat more. Vodka, wine, what would you like to drink?” they asked.
“I have had enough!” I tried to say, but it was not enough. I had to eat. I had to drink more. They were my hosts and they didn’t want me to go hungry, I must eat. I was bursting but still I ate. I picked at the food, dolloped another scoop of cheese and garlic salad onto a slice of bread. There was so much left on the table.
Then we had tea and coffee with chocolates and cookies. We sat around the table for hours, talking. Maybe someone started to sing. My second host mom loved this, to play a song on the piano while we all sang. Except I’d listen, because I didn’t know the words. We drank and drank and they talked and talked.
There was no possibility of finding a TV dinner in a Ukrainian supermarket. The best I could come up with was a couple boxes of “chicken cordon bleu” meals tucked behind the raw fish. And I was all, whoa there! How long had these been sitting here and were they ordered just for me? Hard to imagine any self-respecting Ukrainian woman picking those up.
“All Jessica likes to eat are potatoes, chicken and eggs,” Sestra liked to joke. She was not far from the truth because I wasn't used to cooking this much and not having any ready-made meals. Tricia helped me find a few things that were premade, like different types of varenekiy (dumplings or large pasta with fillings of potatoes, cheese or meat).
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