People have been idealizing rural lifestyles for centuries. Really, the in some ways the Urban Farming movement isn't too different from Virgil's Eclogues or the swarthy muzhiks that Doesoevsky so longs to imitate. For some reason, mankind is hard-wired with an incurable longing for the way things were, for simpler times and simpler problems -- the rural idyll is somehow still seen as ideal for many people.
I for one am proud to a part of this rich tradition of slightly out-of-touch urban academics and intellectuals longing after the wholesome lifestyles of peasants.
I am Ukrainian, and I was raised eating and speaking Ukrainian. Ukraine has been the breadbasket of Europe since before the Greek poets started making agriculture cool, so I like to think we know food. Traditional dishes have been developed through years of wars, foreign occupations from all directions, famines. Most foods are rich, simple and seasonal -- they embody a lot of what contemporary locavore, slow food, urban farm movements represent.
The purpose of this blog is twofold. First it is, in its own way, an idyll -- a Kitchen Idyll, if you will . It contains (or at any rate, will contain) foods I grew up with- heritage recipes I learned from watching my parents and grandparents cook and which they no doubt learned the same way. Eastern European serfs were not a particularly literate group of people, so writing down recipes wasn't exactly something they did. I learned to cook the same way my grandmother and her grandmother did -- repetition and adaptation -- but I'll do my best to come up with exact proportions for those of you who actually know where your measuring cups are. Adaptation, I think, is the most important -- my recipes have been adapted somewhat to my own lifestyle and they will no doubt continue to change to suit their new masters, but this does not make them any less traditional.
Second it is simply a discourse on living well and living simply, making do and avoiding things that come in boxes or tubes.
