MEALS

Our meals have gradually become more complex. Certainly more complex than when we had six pieces of ham, six pieces of cheese, and a loaf of bread. We have also tried to cut back on the piles of dumplings we were eating, so conveniently frozen, so quick to make, and so delicious. We can't always identify the ingredients, but all of them seem to taste good. Olga even improved them by suggesting a simple sour cream and dill sauce. Our biggest cravings are for fresh green vegetables and salads. They are strangely missing from the Ukrainian diet. We recently found a small bag of frozen broccoli that we coveted for a special occasion. Last night we made tuna noodle casserole, good ol' comfort food, Ukrainian style. Really, all our best meals have been attempts at comfort food.

Ukrainian Sliders and Fries

We are using every culinary trick in our chapbook. Flexibility is very important. We've pan fried an unknown white fish with onions and garlic successfully. We've made sliders on slices of baguette with homemade oven fries. We've roasted a whole chicken with stuffing made from our stale bread and leftover salami, then made a good chicken soup the following day by boiling the remains. We attempted macaroni and cheese but the unidentified cheese, (looks like Monterrey Jack), would not melt. The leftovers from that ultimately became the base for our Tuna Noodle Casserole.

This is how we shop for groceries: We spot a picture of tuna on a can, recognize elbow noodles through clear plastic, pick a pint of cream by the percentage of fat listed on the milk carton, and find a can with peas by the picture on the label. Mushrooms are mushrooms the world round. We topped it off with corn flakes. Of course I would have preffered cream of mushroom soup, like any good midwesterner, but that was a bit beyond our shopping linguistics.

Still, nothing has tasted exactly the same as home just yet. Often we buy the wrong ingredients altogether. Mayonnaise is a picture of a hard boiled egg and a sunflower on a juice box. We figured that out last Friday. Yesterday we bought an envelope with a picture of garlic on the front, thinking it was garlic powder. Turned out to be dried garlic greens. Orange juice? Nope. Grapefruit juice. Water or sparkling water? We still have no idea.

Even eating out can catch us. We went for pizza yesterday at a place that Sasha and Victor, her husband, recommended. The board menu behind the counter was in Russian, but not to worry. When I asked the hostess if she had a menu in English, fairly common in Kyiv, she pointed to the register and said, "He speaks English." Sweet. I ordered a Pepperoni Pizza and two Hike Beers. The beer tasted just like I expected. And the pizza? Well, here is a photograph of our pizza--our Pepper-Only Pizza. I guess we will keep trying.