Okroshka (Окрошка)

It's too hot here to eat soup. Everyone agrees. Sweating in our homes or at the lakeside, the idea of a muggy bowl of borscht is wildly unappealing. Since lettuce is hard to come by and I'm tired of the go-to Uke "salad" of chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, what's the next best cool-down meal? Cold soup. Cold dairy soup. It's really much better than it sounds.

There are several variations of okroshka broth. Some are made healthily with kefir or with yoghurt. Others embrace their inner trailer park by using mayonnaise. Still others mix in beets for a lavender, bridal shower look. The following is the classic recipe: sour cream diluted with water and zested with lemon juice. The result is extremely refreshing, crisp, and not entirely unhealthy.

You need to do a lot of boiling and cubing, so it's best to make a lot at one time. If you keep the broth in one container and the contents in another, it'll last several days in the fridge without getting soggy.

• 4 boiled eggs
• 2-3 boiled potatoes
• 2-4 cucumbers
• 250 g of ham
• 150 g of radish

Everything gets cubed up, about peanut-sized. 

Stir it all together with a handful of minced dill, parsley, and green onion.

The broth is easy. For every cup of sour cream, you need a litre of water. An average amount would be about a cup and a half of sour cream and 1.5 L of water, but some people like it chunkier. Add salt and lemon juice to taste. I don't know about other countries, but here it's possible to find citric acid powder (лимонная кислота), which is commonly used instead of lemon juice.



No matter how you prepare it, okroshka is a brisk summer treat. Spice it up with mustard or horseradish. Serve it with ice cubes. Use kvas instead of water. There's no limit to the number of variations! Enjoy, and stay cool.

New Music Video

These past few months, my friends and I have been helping a film student build her graduation portfolio. Last week, we were filming her latest work: a music video. Though I myself am not actually in the video, I was the cross-field bed schlepper, a synchronized candle extinguisher, and the curtain skirt undulator. Despite all that, I could not have predicted how eerie the final product would be. The song was so lyrical and I only worked on the sunshine scenes. What a surprise!

Health Concerns

To an American, lots of countries approach medicine and health in ways that seem...well, foreign. Koreans believed that if you left a fan running overnight without opening the windows, the closed circulation would literally kill you. Eating dog soup was considered holistic Viagra. In major hospitals, open containers of blood and urine samples would sit next to each other, but sitting on a desk was dirty.

I'm only able to speak with any authority on Korea's idiosyncrasies because of the extended time I've spent there. Just passing through a country isn't enough to unearth these traits. More time is required before the peculiarities of health beliefs present themselves. After 15 months in Ukraine, I've been educated in some of the unexpected effects on my health that I would never have expected. Here are 8 things Ukrainians wig out about.

Sitting
Seemingly harmless, sitting can lead to serious consequences. A Ukrainian would never be caught sitting on the ground or on any concrete for that matter. This stems from the belief that such cold surfaces will render you infertile. Interestingly, neither the season nor your gender seem to be a factor. Ancient and unfamiliar women have no qualms about admonishing you for breaking this tenet.

Cold Water
As with most other countries, it's difficult to find liquids at a sufficiently cold temperature. Ice is a luxury, and in the summer even grocery store refrigerators may be used as simple shelf space to conserve electricity. I've heard echoes of the same widespread belief that cold water hinders digestion, but that's not its most interesting health property. Ukrainians believe that ice water is an immune system booster. One of my neighbours pours a bucket of cold water over himself every evening, and he's not alone. On the cover of our school's health text book is a man doing just that. The permeation of this belief was best seen during the Epiphany ceremony in January, when several dozen townsfolk baptised themselves in our frozen lake. Even those who eschewed the privilege averred that no one could possibly get sick after such a plunge.

Wind
Anyone who has taken public transport in this country can attest to the aggravation this health concern causes. I say wind, but the Russian word is separate from typical wind, being more correctly translated draft. Whereas Koreans believe that the closed windows will kill you, Ukrainians believe the exact opposite. When I first moved in to my apartment, the men who were helping me were reluctant to place the bed under the window. Small cracks in the window will let in drafts, which would kill me. Numerous times on buses or trains I've opened windows, only to be barked at by someone behind me. There are children and the elderly on this bus! Are you trying to kill someone!

Chalk
It's a common occurrence in Ukraine to brush against a wall in a stairwell or public building and later find that your whole shoulder is dusty and white. Until several months ago, I believed Ukraine was using chalk as a cheap alternative to paint. Only recently was I corrected. It hadn't dawned on me that the cheapest alternative to paint is nothing. So why rub chalk on all the walls? Locals tell me that this coat of chalk acts as an antibacterial. I think it begs the question: why have we got bacteria all over our concrete walls?

The Common Cold
Three things that I love to ask people from other countries: what do you put on pizza, what do you do to fight hangovers, and what is your cure for the common cold? Well, in Ukraine we add ketchup and mayonnaise, we drink cognac to beat the headache, and if you feel a head cold coming on you need, you guessed it, vodka. Not just any vodka, however. Ukrainians drink a hot pepper and honey infused vodka, slightly warm or at least at room temperature, chased with a lemon slice, followed by a good sweat. This is usually induced by immediately burying yourself in all the blankets in the house.

Hats
This is another touchy subject for the grandmother police force that patrols the town. Your hat must appropriately reflect the weather conditions and is, naturally, their business. Warm winter hats are a must if you don't want every person in town to inquire as to its whereabouts. What I find really interesting is this: the hat doesn't have to cover the ears. Covering up my ears was always one of my mother's winter bundling priorities, yet here it needs only to be on top of the head. Leaving the house without a hat in winter is a recipe for your death of cold, and it is every woman's job to prevent you from coming to such an end. Don't make the mistake, however, of wearing an even partially winter hat into the warmer months: that will kill you, too.

18:00
Something mystic and esoteric occurs at six in the evening. Common dieting wisdom in Ukraine tells us that anything consumed after six will become fat, regardless of what you do in the evening or how late you stay up. For whatever reason, lots of women in my town believe and follow this commandment: после 18:00 не жрать (After 6, don't scarf). In fact, I've seen it more then once as a refrigerator magnet, warning off would-be late night snackers.

Jogging
This applies to most aerobic exercise that isn't folded in to sports like soccer or basketball. Ukrainians can not comprehend why we exercise using transportation. Running is for going places, but you don't go anywhere. You just go in circles. It can't be good for your heart to move so fast. I have actually heard people tell me this. Lots of other volunteers jog around their towns, and they will support me in this. The staring is ubiquitous and consistent. I guess no one explains to them that the accelerated heart rate is exactly what causes the weight loss, or perhaps Ukrainians simply don't support detaching the process (sport) and the goal (exercise).

I'm always interested in uncovering new oddities about this and other countries. If you're reading from Ukraine or any other foreign country and have another strange health story you'd like to share, leave me a comment! I'd love to read about it. 

Kulesh

Kулеш (pronounced cool-YESH) is a camp fire soup. It originated as an army food of the Cossacks in Zaporozhye, but has since spread to camp sites everywhere. It's simple, cheap, and comforting, much like chicken noodle soup. Let's learn how to make it together. A Ukrainian will tell you that it is mandatory to make this soup over a fire, but honestly there's no reason why you can't make this on the range. Well, maybe there's one reason, but it's not a deal breaker. We'll come back to that in a minute.

Starting at the beginning, you'll need:

• 1.5 kg Russet potatoes
• 500 g cooked meat (Feel free to use any sort of leftovers you have around the kitchen. We used pulled pork, but chicken is also very popular.)
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 200 g millet
• 3 bay leaves
• salt/pepper
• 1 cup greens (parsley, dill, green onion)

To hang the cauldron, Sergey cut some green branches, two with forks in them to be pounded into the ground and one a bit sturdier from which the pot could reliably hang. That metal wall was set up to protect the fire from the wind. We got the fire up, then started to boil the water. The onion goes in peeled but otherwise inatact. The bay leaves should be added as well.

Once the water is rolling, it's time for the potatoes. They should be peeled and cut into small cubes.

When the potatoes are done, It's time for carrots, cut julienne, and millet. If you are like me and have no clue what millet is, you could use a comparable grain like barley or even oatmeal. If you do know what millet is, good for you, but you're probably one of those gluten-free loonies, so bad for you. If you live in Ukraine and want to find millet, ask at your rinok for пшено (ударение на втором слог).

When the millet is soft, add the meat and greens. Boil for 5 more minutes and then serve. It's that simple. We actually used this seemingly disgusting boiled-pulled-pork-in-a-jar product. It's not as bad as it sounds. Or looks.

The only reason this must be done on an open flame, other than tradition of course, is the final step. Sergey took another green branch, peeled the bark off it, and then put the raw wood in the fire. Once the wood was blackened, He actually stirred the soup with the charred branch. It didn't make everything taste like cigarettes, as I expected it would. It just added the illusion that we had grilled the meat. Therefore, if you actually grilled the meat that you used, I think you could approximate the smokiness fairly well.

So, that's kulesh! Of course there are lots of variations. One of the more popular ones involves less water and a few beaten eggs at the end, yielding porridgy results similar to Korean juk. We, however, just stuck with the original, and it was both fun to make and filling to eat. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did!