Olesia's Place

Ukrainian Food…
Growing up between my grandparents houses in two different villages I have experienced every type of foods, fresh and just picked.
My mom parents owned a big chunk of land and property, where we had everything to feed our big family without buying anything from store or market. Cows, pigs, chickens, duck. Horses will help with work on the field. Wheat, potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, corn, tomatoes, zucchini, cabbage, beans, radishes, garlic, every kind of greens and herbs, apples, pears, cherries, berries, strawberries, prunes… Can’t remember everything. Oh, the bees! We had those too, to feed us kids with yummy honey.
Waking up at 5am and work all day outside it was a blest. Cut the grass with a sickle, feed the animals, milk the cows, work on a field, eat on the field as well in a summer… House always smell like food. Fresh milk, butter milk, sour cream, butter, farmer’s cheese. Different pickling jars, hundreds of them for winter. Apple cider, fresh pressed and canned for winter, dry foods, even fresh pressed sunflower seed oil. Everything was there.
Now, my grandmother, dads mom, she lived between forest and river. Wild animals, wild mushrooms, wild berries on one side and fresh fish on the other. And big chunk of land as well to grow everything else. And cows, pigs, chickens, duck, geese, rabbits, turkeys. My grandmother was the best cook in a village. She made every wedding or big celebration happened. She cooked in her dreams I think too. Six in the morning she would have big bowl of pierogis made, or fresh potatoes with dill, or stuffed fried doghnuts… Guess me watching her cook, give me my inspiration in life.

Ukrainian food is one of the richest national cuisines. Its dishes are well known far away from Ukraine. And the Ukrainian recipes of the foods are very popular nowadays. Is anyone, who doesn’t know the Ukrainian Borsch?

The Ukrainian food is characterized with large number of components. For example the traditional Ukrainian food – borsch – contains 20 components. Well, Olesia’s contains 57!!!The peculiarities have the thermal processing of the products of the dishes. As a rule, there are used several types of thermal processing for the preparing of the food (frying, boiling, stewing, baking). The recipes of the Ukrainian cuisine include the number of different fruits and vegetables, as well as meat, poultry, fish, mushrooms. The most common meat product is pork. Also salo/lard/ is very important part for every Ukrainian.