Dinner For Ukraine Update

Stand And Deliver

All of us at Kitchen Detail and Open Hand Pasta and Provisions are amazed and delighted at the number of purchases and donations for our Ukrainian Menu Dinner that will be delivered on April 21 to residents in the DMV. There is still time to order this menu (or send one to someone you love) until April 18 at 9pm . In addition to fabulous food, each order includes a loaf of John’s freshly baked rustic bread and a  commemorative menu. We have chosen to donate the proceeds to Razom – an exceptional, effective corps of volunteers that works closely with groups of Ukrainian citizens and the defense forces inside Ukraine. We’ve included the video below to introduce you to Razom and its programs. Their grit and heart are inspirational.

Some of our readers have asked about Ukrainian cookbooks, and John and I can recommend two: Beyond Borscht and Mamushka. Both books include recipes from other Eastern European countries: Moldova, Poland, Hungary and Russia.

Tatyana Nesteruk is a US food blogger and author of two cookbooks with a youtube channel. Her family emigrated from the Ukraine in 1989.

Olia Hercules is a Ukrainian chef who lives in the UK and is the author of three cookbooks (Mamushka and Summer Kitchen are available here).

 A country’s cuisine is such an important part of its citizens identity, and to that end we want you to enjoy a sampling of Ukraine’s cuisine and help this brave, brave country in its hour of need. 

Stay Informed & Involved

There are other ways that you can inform yourself about the Ukrainian struggle against  the brutal domination by Russia, which has existed for centuries. We wrote in the first post about the Holodomor memorials here and in Kyiv, when millions of Ukrainians were purposely starved to death by Stalin.

I just went to the opening of an exhibition of poster art at The Ukraine House in Washington, DC. The posters are from a collaborative group of artists in Ukraine, Pictoric_ua. This exhibit will continue through April 22, 2022.We have used the artwork with attribution to each artist in our posts for Kitchen Detail and on Instagram. Three of them were chosen for the commemorative menu. The staff at Ukraine House has set up bids for each poster, with the funds going to their programs to aid their citizens. It was difficult for me to choose just one, but I finally settled on this one by Jenya Polosina.

You can contact Pictoric.ua to organize an exhibition of these posters in your community at this email address: pictoric.ua@gmail.com.

Another way to get news about what is going on in Ukraine is to donate and subscribe to The Kyiv Independent. You can become a patron through Patreon and support the work of over thirty journalists and editors who were fired from the Kyiv Post The owner, Adnan Kivan, is a very wealthy real estate and construction tycoon with political interests in Ukraine, who began to “infringe” on their editorial independence. The staff presents news about Ukraine from other recognized independent news sources and writes surprising stories of their own along with some great infographics.

Listen To The Birds

And to end this post and send our gratitude to all of you who joined us in this effort to support Razom and the defence of Ukraine, I want to share with you one of my favorite video clips that appeared on my Facebook page. You can follow the Instagram account of Taras Topolia, the singer for the Ukrainian band Antityla. His personal posts as he and his bandmates fight in critical areas of Ukraine are informative, heartbreaking and yet have the steely optimism that is perhaps uniquely Ukrainian.  It is from the  Facebook account ofAmy Wadge Page.