Do any of you have Ukrainian ancestry?

How about the food?? I think Poland and Ukraine are 2 nations with no reccomendable food. In that their cuisine is almost as bad as that of Ireland..

Church-feh. I had the distinction of being raised by an amalgam of Catholic and orthodox traditions. youd have an Easter Holiday that lasted a damn month. the entire month was death and blood and torture. Id have been more comfortable being an aztec. Guilt, and sober reflection followed by feasting on artery clogging fats with hardly a hope of dessert. at least the Lutherans had lime jello.

ehBeth

Yes, the weddings are amazing. I've been to quite a few.
Have you ever been to a christening? When I was a child they used to go on for days & days. Heaven for the children!

I steered clear of a lot of the Ukrainian church/community stuff from my adolescence on. Mainly because these were very political events here in Oz & my politics had zoomed off in exactly the opposite direction! Made things very difficult.

I don't know why we say "the Ukraine", but it's often called that here in Oz. My parents would refer to it as something like :"Ukrainia". Spoken with the right accent, of course!

There is a huge population of Ukrainians in the prairies. Just outside of Edmonton there is a fascinating museum on the early Ukrainian settlers.
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/ukrainian/introduction/
Its rather indepth, but has a lot of very interesting history, in both languages.

farmerman

I have to disagree with you about the food. My mother made these delicious stuffed ( with rice & mince0 cabbage thingies, "vareniky" (trying to translate from Ukrainian ) which where like little doughy. half moon shapes stuffed with potato & cottage cheese, or sauerkraut & fried onion, etc, etc. Oh & I LOVE home made dill pickles, the potato salads with eggs, the poppy seed cakes ..... Of course, many of these foods can be found in many parts of Eastern Europe, but I always think of them as Ukrainian. And how about a good Borscht? Yum!

I wonder if there is a difference in the experience of Ukrainian culture brought over by people a year ago, five years ago, twenty years ago, fifty years ago, one hundred years ago? Most of the people I know came over fairly recently, and they are a lively group - not at all like the descendents of the people who came over 75 - 100 years ago. They don't mix too well either - the new immigrants and the old-time Ukes here. It's interesting to watch - the 3rd-4th generation Ukes seem quite protective of their old-time culture - though it doesn't reflect the modern Ukraine at all. We're definitely seeing some cultural pushing and shoving here - when it comes to stuff like Caravan. The recent immigrants want it run to reflect modern Ukraine, the ones whose families came over decades ago want it run as if the 1980s+ never happened.

Dunno about your food experience, farmerman, but the food that my colleague has brought in - reflecting what she calls traditional Ukrainian cooking - has been fabulous - bright, wonderfully prepared vegetables - delicately seasoned chicken. Marvellous.

Thank you for that link, Ceili. Looks fascinating! I will return there & have an in-depth look!

I'm sorry, FM, i can't let that one go by . . . either you have never eat Irish food in Ireland, or you're confusing it with "English cuisine." The food in Ireland which was not an English or American import, when i lived there, was very good, and of a very nutritious character. Lamb sausage, salmon, trout, good roast beef, new potatoes, every vegetable under the sun which would grow in that climate--the food in Ireland is very good.

ehBeth

That's very interesting about the different waves of Ukrainian migrants to Canada. To my knowledge their hasn't been a sizeable recent migration here in Oz. Most of the Ukrainians came here after WW2 & sadly, many have died, or are quite elderly now. Sounds like a very different scene in Canada.
If you have a minute could you tell me a little more about "the cultural pushing & shoving". I'd really like to know more. But no hurry. I'm offline soon to do a little shopping now. And pardon my ignorance but I have no idea if what the Caravan is.

set, I worked in ireland for the Court Planara on mining disputes, spent months at a time.
I got sick and came very close to a full anaphallactic shock on gallway mussels, the damn bay's polluted from sewage. (I didnt learn that till later)

I never had "lamb' in Ireland, only mutton, the difference is mutton is only good for sausage, (i have a sheep farm with my main product as club stock, if the rib bones of "lamb" are flat in cross section , then its too old to eat). They would routinely boil the crap out of mutton and serve it in the local restaurants in Dublin and Cork (where my office was).

in Dublin , Id stay at the Arms (up from the Post Office) and theyd be boiling cabbage at 8 in the morning. they would serve it with beef or mutton (usually boiled also)

Breakfast is not a meal the Irish put much effort into understanding. Even the English engineers who worked on my projects would comment about how they rather enjoyed egg mcmuffins at the Mickey Dees that was located near the Molly Malone statue.At least that was edible with no surprise textures or tepidness.

Id agree about the salmon or trout but its nothing overly special. im not especially crazy about the wild taste of lake salmon or wild trout. I prefer pen raised salmon, no surprise flavors.

I did have some good food at ethnic restaurants like Indian, and there was this little pub up in Kildare County that served alot of
desert food (big horse farms up there owned by Arab corporations) .

Salt is considered a spice to the Irish.

To me, the second w orst food on the planet is Irish followed by anything Polish or Ukrainian,The absolute worst food on the planet is the interpretive Italian food as prepared in Libya. .

i realize you have a cultural tie with Ireland , my last trip there was 4 years ago, so unless theyve made vast improvements, countrywide, theyre on my gastronomic **** list. I plan to return this summer or fall, and I love the country, dont get me wrong, its like no other place (except for food)


Msolga, my family branch that arrove from Ukraine came in the Early 20th century where my grandfather was also an escapee. Walking great distances was not an uncommon way to start a new life.

re Germans in the Ukraine:

here's an interesting article from the State University of North Dakota:
"Germans from Russia" or "Germans from Ukraine"

(May I add that in every-day German the term "Russlanddeutsche" means any origianally German from Russia, no difference if from Siberia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine ...)

Thanks for the link, Walter. Really interesting.

Gosh, you seem to have had some bad meals, farmerman! I'm curious: what abysmal Ukrainian food have you eaten?

FM, i'd say the difference was location. I lived in Sligo, on the west coast. Pesonally, i have nothing against mutton--and neither the mutton nor the beef i ate was ever boiled. I never once had boiled cabbage, nor smelled it being boiled anywhere. The breakfasts i had were not much different than those in America--fried eggs, sausages, bacon rashers, toast (usually three types), dry cereal with milk, and coffee. The sammiches, especially from the local deli, were quite good. Mrs. McNamara made excellent sammiches, which she bagged up for me to take to work. She had been in New York for 15 years, and some of the boys and i prevailed upon her to make American style hamburgers, which were heavenly. I don't eat McD's here, and wouldn't over there. I did not eat at the Wimpy's or the Four Lanterns either, unless drunk, and then the menu was definitely English in nature--fried stuffs distantly related to food. Perhaps i prefer the gamey taste of wild fish because i grew up eating fish which we had caught ourselves.

Eating in Cork or Dublin is as poor an opportunity for eating good food as it would be to eat in comparable American cities.

margo, The usual stuff pierogie (pyrohy) or varenyky , Ive had it boiled and fried,real peasant food that I didnt like. Ther fried onions on top of this dough thing full of kapusta , blecch

halubki-tastes like pigeon burger. wrapped in cabbage
Kyshka an Kolbas were good , but they were just good baloneys to me

The nut rolls and kutya were very good. I still make holiady nut rolls from my grandmothers old recipe. This is, i have to admit, a treat that everyone looks forward to during PAscha and in the Christmas season.

I grew up all right but , I think the thing I disliked the most of Ukrainian food (oe polish food) is the lack of variety.

set, I pnly remember a few trips to Western Ireland , mostly as holiday trips to geologic locations. I never made it as far north as Sligo. Perhaps I should have. Cork had a lot of seafood choices but nothing was done creatively unless it was in a Chinese restaurant.
I spent much of my free time in the Wicklow Mtns just photographing features and cairns , Often Id forget to eat, and wound up in pubs that looked at food preparation as a real pain in the ass.
If I had any sensse, id convince some really good cooks and finance some real good restaurants for dublin. Its a fun city with people up at all hours of the night looking for something to do. A New york style deli with Lox or pastrami, or reubens . Id be a food saviour to a nation that is still still kind of self conscious about self indulgence.

One other thing, Weve been raising sheep for quite a while and were all sensitized to the smell of them, same thing with beef. I cannot eat a lamb heavier than about 110 lb, because after that, the tallowy smell gets into the "fell" . In cattle its the other way, If you butcher one at too light a weight, it has a gamey taste. i think
a few stock farmers are like this.

FM, usually pubs provide pretty good sammiches, but only during limited hours. Hotels also provide decent mid-day and evening meals. As for Dublin or Cork (two cities, and i dislike cities), if ever you think that you might be going back there, go here:

P45--Ireland's Busiest Discussion Board[/color]

and look for the "Main Forums" link (in small print) at the top, left center. Then check out the Restaurants, Food and Drink forum. Also, there are a great many members of the CPLA there (Cork People's Liberation Army), who could direct you to good dining in that benighted burg. The best eatery in Galway, on Eyre Square, is upstairs at the GBC (Galway Bakery Company), but if you are not from around there, you likely would have no clue that there's a restaurant on the premises. I usually ate at the guest house i stayed in, or found a deli. One problem is the lack of flashy advertising, so that the casual passerby would not know that they were passing a restaurant or deli.

I am not particularly fond of spicy food. Nouveau cuisine these days has gone gaga, for example, over cilantro. The first time i ate a dish with cilantro in it, there was such a distinct taste of soap, i thought they had hand-washed the plates, and not rinsed them properly. Later, a friend of mine who is a chef prepared a dish with cilantro, and i learned that this was the source of what i considered a very unpleasant taste. In Korea, they usually have two spices--enough garlic to fell a plow horse unaccustomed to that plant, and nasty little cayenne type peppers which they leave on red tile roofs in the summer sun until they shrivel up and turn blackish-purple. Given that in 1970 and 1971, the "meat" you were eating was either from a worn-out plow ox, or dog meat, heavy doses of garlic and hot pepper made a lot of sense. The entire Korean penninsula smells of garlic; the Japanese pejorative for Koreans is garlic-eaters.

I lived briefly in the southwest, and travelled in Mexico on several occasions. I was glad of the spice on those occasions, because i didn't want to inquire to closely into the quality of the "beef" or "pork" i was being served. All in all, i'm not impressed with spicy food. I use only about two spices myself, salt and garlic. I do find it ironic that people gush over spices, which they use with farm fish, or something tasteless such as orange roughie. I personally like the taste of "wild" fish (a friend of mine has a salmon-fishers license, and the Atlantic salmon fisheries in Ireland are sufficiently well controlled that he lands some very big ones--the steaks are large and tasty), and i like mutton because it has a strong flavor. I enjoyed the fact that the milk and butter had a "green grass" taste in the spring time in Ireland.

Different tastes, i would ascribe it to. If you do go back to Ireland, avail yourself of the link above, and get some pointers to good restaurants from the wild and savage Irish themselves--a cheerful and fun loving lot who will sing and dance with you, and attempt to beat hell out of you, all in the same drunken evening.

psssst, farmerman, I'm Olga, not margo!
I don't think margo has a Ukrainian bone in her body!
But thank you for describing the Ukrainian food you disliked. You made my mouth water!

My grandmother came to the States from Sanok in Galicia around 1905. At that time it was part of Austro-Hungary, and the population of the town was 50/50 Ukrainian/Polish. While working in the States she met my Grandfather who had immigrated from Ukraine at about the same time.

My mother grew up speaking Ukrainian at home, and English at school. One of the biggest regrets I have is that I wasn't also taught Ukrainian while growing up - back in the '50s you were supposed to forget the old country and only speak English, or so I was told. I guess I know around a dozen words or so. I was a puskudney little boy, dobra deen, yak-vi, and so on.

My grandfather died of black lung before I was born. Every couple of years the extended family would meet for Christmas. My grandmother, mother, and all the aunts and uncles would be sitting around the kitchen table chatting away in Ukrainian, while my father and the other non-Ukrainian spouses, and all us grandchildren would be sitting at the edge of the kitchen having absolutely no idea what was being said.

My granmother died in 1984, one year after our first child was born.

Jim

Ah, another one!
Dobra deen!

Gosh, they make Ukrainians different these days!

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/16/1084646068661.html

~

Thas true - not a single Ukrainian bone - but I do have the odd Irish bone in my body - so found the Irish food discussion interesting.

I stayed in B&B's and thought the Irish breakfasts fantastic - great bacon, home made preserves, and that wonderful soda bread. But standards deteriorated considerably between my first visit in 1987 and my second visit in 1997. On my second visit, B&B was much more a business, and the breakfasts were much more ordinary.

I do remember Sligo very favourably - even without Mrs McNamara!