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.




UK Spring Finale

My internship ended quietly and all too quickly, without much fanfare.  One last Smoky Mule at Hyde and Co.  One last picnic with new friends thanks to my flatmate.  One last Sunday service at Bristol Vineyard and as many stolen moments as possible with my friend Kate and her family.

Sunday evening I arrived in Oxford for another impromptu visit with Casey.  We took her foodie list of recommendations and set off on an unofficial beer tasting tour.  A pint at The Eagle and Child for my friend David.  A fabulous shared Sunday roast and bitter at The Jericho Tavern.  [It was so good we returned the next day for lunch]. 

A stumbled upon beer festival in a quiet pub close to our hostel.  As always, time with Casey is so easy and just...good.  Must be her Portland sensibility...

The next afternoon found me at Clapham Junction in London, meeting my nslp's [aka long term partner in crime] sister.  Originally planned as a research time with cookery schools in London for my thesis, I hadn't realized that not only was it Easter Break, but it was also just before the Royal Wedding.

So instead, I spent my evenings with Nicola's fun sister and her flatmate, and wandered through my days.  Finally made it to the infamous Churchill Arms in Notting Hill, home of my friend's favourite Thai food.  Found a salon and went blonde.  Navigated the buses rather than the Tube.  Walked all along the Embankment,

Cookery Show along the Embankment

sampled my way through Borough Market,

drank in the Tate Modern and was chatted up by a gorgeous sports medicine grad student.  Oh yeah, did I mention blondes have more fun?

My final weekend found me back in Bishopstone with my beloved Royal Oak cast of characters - and Wendy, who was completing her internship part two there.  I brandished my trusty Wusthof again to work in the pub kitchen, entertained KP Nick with my constant ducking in the tiny walk-in, had late night wine chats with Barny and Wendy, took a tractor for an Easter Egg hunt,

revisited my favourite cows (now in pasture),

and met the 1500 new piglets.

And through it all (except for in Oxford Circus in London), all I could ask myself was "Why am I leaving?"

Easter Lunch, compliments of Barny

It was only when Wendy and I turned to each other early Easter Monday on the plane that I was able to answer the question with genuine enthusiasm. 

"We're off to Krakow and the Ukraine!"

Pure Magic

Memorable experiences have been the rule rather than the exception this year.  The day I will never forget however, is the one I lived rather than photographed. 

"Liberating" a pair of dark green Hunters from outside the pub and a pair of his stepdaughter's overalls - Tim deposited me in front of the calf barn at Eastbrook Farm one bright sunny morning. From 8am til 8pm, I shadowed Lesley, a truly remarkable homeopathic farmer.

Originally from Holland, she rediscovered a love of organic farming and animals and left her job at KLM behind without regrets. Tall, lean and incredibly strong, she pilots a beat-up land rover around the 1400 acre farm with her scruffy Jack Russell, Barry, (dubbed "tripod" in the village due to the fact he lost a leg) in her lap at all times. This isn't just a job to her - it's a calling. Frustration shows readily in her voice when she asks how people can go home for dinner when something's gone wrong and the animals haven't been fed yet. There is genuine love and affection for the animals she cares for, clearly visible in the way she cheerfully greets her girls and boys and talks gently to them all day long.

We visited every cow on the farm to feed them and check them over, lugging hay bales in and out of the back of the land rover. We helped some of the other workers herd sheep down a long country road between fields, and treated several calves with worms and eye problems - typical of the breed. We fed the chickens and set up a fence around their pen so lazy Basil, a true black sheep, couldn't steal their food. All the while she told me all about the breeds, treatment, and her views on farming. 

I couldn't stop laughing  over the human antics of the animals we worked with - the gangly calves who leapt out from their pens to get better access to hay, looking back gleefully over their shoulders at us, proud of their daring.  Or the methods Basil used to bend the other sheep to his will to form a live battering ram at the fence around the chicken coop.  Or the bull strutting around the yard eyeing the females proudly, having just finished "servicing" them.

But two experiences stood out the most. A proactive measure, vitamin pellets (boluses) are given to cows on organic farms. Cows are herded through a narrow passageway with a gate on the end that closes around their neck to hold them in place to administer the bolus. The rowdy calves who rushed furiously through bellowed loudly (although unhurt) at the loud clanking sound. The mellow ones sauntered along and received a gentle closing that merely made them blink. We had 80 cows to weigh and treat that afternoon, and many of them needed urging of the flank-slapping variety to walk through.

Now, the bolus pellets are placed two-deep in a narrow "gun" apparatus that James would then place in the frothing mouth of the cow, pull the trigger, and release the pellets into the cow's stomach. But frothing would be an understatement. Cow drool is long and slimy and oozed all down the handle of the gun. When James in fact opened his overall pocket later to check on the pay stubs inside, they were soaked beyond recognition - from cow saliva.

"Why," he moaned, "do I always get stuck with this job!!"

"Because you're the new lad!" shot back Clive from across the pen.

My job? To load the pellets into the slimy, cow-drooled gun. Clive's eyes twinkled as he watched me gingerly try to place them without getting covered in sticky saliva, all the while trying not to seem girly.  Fail.

The other highlight was also drooly, but a little like a chick lit novel. Two of the newborn calves weren't feeding properly, so we went to the dairy, filled two litre bottles with fresh warm milk . . . and then I settled in the straw and laughingly fed baby cows with huge eyes. They guzzled so greedily, that when they let go of the bottle to get air, there wasn't enough time to get the teat back in their mouths before they latched onto the next closest thing. Apparently, my knee looks like a suitable subsitute.

But the peace that crept over me feeding the calves while their mothers looked patiently on was priceless. If only I had pictures...

Movin' to the Country

Smack in the middle of my internship, I found a week scheduled at the Royal Oak in Bishopstone, a Wiltshire village of 600 people more or less.  A week living on Eastbrook Farm, cavorting with sheep, pigs, "veal", and "beef" . . . and working in the kitchen of a gastropub with current head chef, Barny Haughton.

Okay, so I was a lot nervous.  I'm a competent home cook - sometimes even a very good one.  I've learned a tremendous amount this year about skills, techniques and "off-roading" - what I call cooking without a recipe and being inspired by seasonal offerings.  But working in a proper restaurant kitchen?  With an award-winning chef?  I think not.

And yet, the week has to rate as one of the biggest highlights of the year.  Helen & Tim's big brick farmhouse where I stayed was so quintessentially English and unpretentious - shelves stuffed with books every which way, kitchen Aga, complete with rather moody dog, Gracie, and wellies and farm overalls piled on hooks outside the side door.  The main door, of course, is rarely used. 


My little blue room looked out onto thatched roof cottages and I could hear irritated cows when their breakfast was too long in coming.  As for my breakfast, the lady of the house left out fresh squeezed orange, carrot and ginger juice daily.

My walk down to the pub in the crisp mornings, and again in the late afternoon for dinner service, wound through back lanes and fields of daffodils.

 

And the pub itself was the best kind of education.  A patient teacher, whose "barking" delivered in the Queen's English made me smile even in the midst of a stressful dinner rush, threw me into the thick of everything and I learned fast.  My first day there, it was only the two of us on.  I may have butchered the pork loin a second time while preparing it, but I was plating starters and pork belly mains by supper.  The cast of local characters wandered by the kitchen often to check in, and Nick, the lovely KP, kept spirits high and dishes clean.  But wow - I have so much respect for anyone who chooses a chef's life.  Every night I collapsed in exhaustion - after Montepulciano and long talks around the pub fireplace that is.

Life as an Intern

"So glad you're here!  It's pastry class tonight and we need to measure out 13 sets of ingredients for the following 3 recipes.  Kelly will show you where to find the supplies in the downstairs kitchen when she has a minute."

And so began my initiation as "intern". 

Bordeaux Quay is a landmark brasserie, bar, deli, restaurant and cookery school on the riverfront in Bristol.  Started by Barny Haughton in 2006, it was the first restaurant and food initiative in Europe to embrace sustainable gastronomy on every level including food sourcing, water, energy, recycling, waste and staff education.  It was even the first restaurant to win the Soil Association's Gold Award.  While Barny is no longer involved in the restaurant and some elements have changed, the Cookery School is still very much his project and a continuation of his previous work, Quartier Vert, with over 20 years of organic and sustainable practices behind it. 

Barny's approach to education and his particular passion for reaching youth resonated with me during his lecture series at UNISG last Fall.  Although I toyed with other options, BQ was where I most wanted to be for this 6 week research and internship period.  However, despite the flurry of emails prior to my arrival here, I didn't know exactly what my work would entail.

It's actually quite simple.  I help with cookery classes.  I'm the slow(er) one in the corner, too timid at first to answer serious cooking questions but there to prep recipe ingredients in organized ways, clear away messy dishes, label baking trays with names and fetch last minute ingredients from unknown locations around the facility.   My uniform of chef's whites, striped apron and ubiquitous blue checkered pants marks me out as I traipse up and down the large wooden staircase in the centre of Bordeaux Quay, throwing myself on the mercy of the harried kitchen staff to track down unknown winter vegetables like swede, or fresh yeast hidden by temperamental bakers. 

I've learned how to get the stern Ukrainian bartender to smile (sometimes) while he makes our much-needed coffees on morning shifts, how to coax already prepared ingredients from the sometimes moody kitchen crew and I'm always able to find soft butter, dariole molds and a good chat from the resident pastry chef.  After several early morning preps for mobile classes in local primary schools, I've even discovered that the deli's cheese and pickle sandwiches are perfect mid-morning pick-me-ups. 

With a full schedule of long-term courses to one-off workshops, I've been able to work at every time of day with almost every member of the staff and every type of group imaginable. From corporate adults, teen moms, university first years, private high schoolers learning skills for their gap year, children with Down's syndrome - this school does so much more than just teach the local middle to upper class how to cook with confidence, important as those classes are.  Despite the redundancy of my daily tasks, I absolutely love my work.

And in the end, it's people who are most important no matter where you are and what you're doing.  In every class, connecting to students even when I had no clue what I was doing has made each day worthwhile.  Like teaching knife skills to a little girl with Down's Syndrome whose accent was so thick I could barely understand her constant chatter except when she told me she had to fart - again.  Or commiserating with a teenager who squealed at the sight of a fresh mackerel - but tried it and liked it once cooked.  Or destroying my first ever batch of pastry dough with too-hot hands while chatting with the gorgeous guy next to me who executed his perfectly and proceeded to tease me the rest of class.  Or discussing why parmigiano is so expensive and how it's made to a group of kids who kept peppering me with questions.  Or even encouraging a frustated twelve year old to try just one more time to put his pasta dough through the machine - to perfect results. 

Drawing deep breaths of clean air as I walk along the river back towards home every day, I leave tired but satisfied.

Getting to Know Bristol

Some places (and people, for that matter) just feel like home from your very first introduction: Bristol is one of them for me.  Full of avid cyclists and outdoorsy people, a vibrant food, arts and music scene, intriguing history, great neighbourhoods - from posh Clifton Village to Montpelier's street art (I'm completely enthralled by Banksy) to the riverfront Quays, hole-in-the-wall bookshops, quintessentially British architecture, soaring churches, secret garden attached to my flat block and hill after hill to climb - I couldn't have found a better place to hang out in for two months.

And for the first time in almost a year, I can understand and be understood EVERYWHERE.  Even if I didn't love my "work", flat, neighbourhood, new friends (which I most emphatically do), that might just be enough for me right now.  Only half kidding...

So I spend my days off wandering, camera in hand, chatting to the incredibly friendly locals, indulging in the occasional pint of lager or cider and savouring the absolutely Spring glorious weather that belies all British whinging. 

From Bra to Bristol

 The sun was golden, reflecting off the buildings as the airport bus wound its way through the streets of Milan.  Not quite the same blazing light as last May, but a similar warm, uniquely Italian summer feel.  Having flown in and out of Milan's three airports these past 10 months more than I'd like to admit given the ensuing hideous carbon footprint, there was a strong sense of deja vu. 

But this was different.  It suddenly hit me that it's over.  Sure, I'll be returning to Italy in May to defend my thesis and graduate.  But school is done.  Some of my classmates are flying home, not to return for graduation.  Others are jetting off to a pizzeria in Naples, a design studio in Florence, a winery in Umbria, free-lance food and travel writing in Berlin, to hug pigs and hairy coos in the Scottish highlands, to work in an organic vegetarian restaurant in Seville.  After months of sardine-like social conditions, we will no longer be privy to everyone's daily moods or share common frustrations over impromptu gourmet potlucks and 4 euro bottles of good Nebbiolo.  It's a little unsettling.

As for me, my jet plane was bound for Bristol in the UK to an unseen flat, an unknown flatmate (albeit a friend of a friend) and an "internship" of undetermined tasks at The Cookery School at Bordeaux Quay.  You never know what will happen when inviting a favourite instructor for dinner, but that meal back in September paid off in spades.

A short verbal tussle with the young customs officer ("no sir, it's more a research project than an internship"), a bus ride through rolling green hills dotted with thatched cottages and a village called "Downside", a rapid cab ride through steep streets lined with brightly-doored row houses, and I was lugging my suitcases up 4 flights of stairs to the top floor flat.




Toasting my new adventure tonight with wine and spicy curry prepared by my new flatmate, Italy already seems like a distant memory.