The Sweet Taste of Remembrance

In the dead of night in 1927, my grandfather’s family packed a few belongings and fled their small Ukrainian village. Already persecuted for their Mennonite beliefs, my great-grandfather was also informing on the Red Army. While they were fortunate enough to make it to Mexico and eventually the plains of central Canada, those left behind were not. Sent to Siberia as punishment, they sent one letter to my grandfather. And then no more.

My grandfather’s generation spoke little of their memories of the old country, although the few heirlooms packed in haste hold a place of pride in our homes. Despite the lack of stories, however, the Ukraine has always lived and breathed through the food of our family gatherings.

Paska, the egg bread baked in coffee tins, to form a tall muffin loaf, tops frosted and covered in sprinkles. This Easter baking was always a bigger childhood treat than chocolate eggs.

The distinctive summer borscht full of traditional farmer sausage and dolloped with sour cream. Once I walked into a new acquaintance’s kitchen, sniffed the air and commented that the soup smelled like my grandmother’s. Turns out he hails from the same small Manitoba town, and they’d shared recipes.

Heaps of boiled pierogies with sautéed onions and farmer sausage, topped with sour cream—the ultimate winter comfort food.

Even the heirlooms I’ve now inherited are food-related: two china teacups from Russia, over 120 years old.

So with internship finished, thesis sketched out, and three weeks before graduation, what’s a girl to do? In the case of my travel buddy/flatmate and I, the answer is simple: go east. Which is how I found myself on a night train to Lviv, the open window washing my tired face with pre-dawn breezes.

After every conceivable opportunity snatched this year to go to Eastern Europe, I knew I would like the Ukraine. What I didn’t expect in a land so foreign, all signage in Cyrillic, was the strong sense of connection to home.

The Paska that decorated a shoe shop display reminded me of the more traditional ones my mother made when I was a child. With the advent of my three cousins twenty years ago, the bread is now baked in regular loaf tins to allow for more frosting and sprinkles coverage.

The pickles have the same garlic and dill tang as those that my mother and I put up during our canning days every August. With the snap of each bite, I could see my mother wipe sweat off her laughing face as she waited for the jars to seal in the overheated kitchen.

And with the platter of vareniky, I am sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen counter while she painstakingly prepares cottage cheese pierogies for breakfast the week I brought my first serious boyfriend to visit.

The sweet taste of remembrance and home lingers long after the last bite.