2019 Eurasia Adventure - Finale By Food

Wife and I are now back in the comforting embrace of home in Albuquerque...luxuriating in the comfort of beds that actually account for our sadly arthritic bodies. As is my custom, I am throwing myself back into the other aspects of my transitioned life...namely the earning of income to allow me to continue my globe trotting lifestyle. Of course it is not quite as simple as that but more on that in a future post. For now I am not quite ready to let you leave our Eurasian adventure quite so soon. There will (of course) be the traditional 'navel gazing' analytical post soon. But I also decided to assemble the foodie highlights of the second half of the trip in a single post. So for your gastronomic pleasure the Ukraine and Greece

Ukraine

Family Food Memory Tour

To understand my feeling about eating in Kyiv, you need to understand that I am 100% second generation Eastern European Jewish of background with a family that loved their food traditions. I ate this food growing up and loved it. Coming to this part of the world was this opportunity to go right back to my roots...AND in the most economical way one could imagine! LOL.

Cured Fish of all kinds was a major part of what my family thought embodied "living" when I was a child. These types of things are extremely hard to find in the high desert Southwest and if they are available, are very expensive. I indulged during my time in Kyiv.

Salt cured mackerel and herring

Smoked salmon

Sturgeon Caviar

The Emperor's dish

For 20% of what it would cost in the US

There were also foods that Wife's family grew up with because they immigrated from the same area

Vareniki 

A dumpling with a pasta like dough filled with all kinds of fillings such as potatoes, cheese, cabbage, etc.

Wife remembers family and church members making these on Sundays when she was growing up

Green Borscht or Schav

A soup made from sorrel

In my family it was served cold and meatless

This version was served hot with meat in it

Eating out with the Two's

A cheese baked in a bread

Who would guess they would serve the foie gras pate in a tin!

It was still damn good

This was just a steak but also pretty damn good

The corn...not so much

Chicken Kiev

 

I wish I could remember what these two cakes were because we devoured both of them up!

Greece

A lot of our eating was outside enjoying the Mediterranean enviornoment

Cooking at our rental was a pleasure because the quality of ingredient we purchased locally was so high

An "Easter" pork stew made by yours truly for our 'third Easter' of the trip

Some Greek appetizers

Meatballs

Saganaki

Fried Cheese

Fried zucchini balls

What the Greeks call a 'Greek' Salad

Marinated Octopus

The culmination of weeks of celebration of Wife's 70th

Official birthday cake (click here)

Happy grandchildren celebration

The Cake

 

2019 Eurasia Adventure - Kyiv, Sergey Style

Sergey is #2's driver. Her work requires her to flit all over this city and for most Americans driving here does not come easy (as is true of many, many, many cities and countries in the world). His sister emigrated to the US and now his parents are there too. He has visited the US a number of times mostly to his family the the San Francisco Bay area. #2 had a block of time on Thursday where he was not needed so was made available to us as tour guide. We merely threw ourselves in his capable hands and off to visit the city we went.

Meet Sergey

 Our itinerary for the day

• The Golden Gate
• Opera House
• The Mayoral Government Buildings
• Museum of the History of the Ukraine in WWII
• The Pechersk Lavra Monastery 
• St. Andrew's Church and the Andrivs'kyi descent
• National History Museum of Ukraine overlook

Golden Gate

Reconstruction of early 11th century main gate into the city of Kiev Rus modeled after the Golden Gate of Byzantium

Opera House and environs

 

Famous Folks

Honoring Famous Guy

Half-dressed Women

Going to the Mayoral Building

(which I believe may include Parliament)

We saw what appeared to be a demonstration

With the tumultuous recent election, I was curious to take a look

Approaching it

I noted that all the 'demonstrators' seemed...well distracted...certainly not like they were 'demonstrating

Sergey told us in the car that in fact political factions pay to have people stand out and look like they are demonstrating

You get $10 a day which is not bad money in the Ukraine to just stand

On to the Museum of the History of the Ukraine in WWII 

This is in fact a very large park that includes a museum dedicated to the Afghanistan War as well

It includes the Motherland Monument

Weapons galore

And an impressive sculpture that covered major aspects of WWII

(1941 defense from German attack, suffering the occupation, resistance from the partizans, contribution of the workers, the attack over the Dnieper River in1943 to recover Kyiv)

I was fairly impressed with the sculpture overall though could not find any detail about who did them

The Pechersk Lavra Monastery

The is a huge, active monastic complex

A UNESCO Heritage site, it has massive underground tunnels that date from the time of the Mongol/Tartar invasions

There are many, many workshops but this is the major site for the production of the gold covered onion domes that cover the majority of Ukraine Orthodox churches

And these are real gold leaf covered!

Wife and I contemplating where on the Tower we should add gold covered onion domes

 

Moving on...this whole tour took about 4.5 hours

 St. Andrew's Church and the Andrivs'kyi descent

The descent

 Looking up to St. Andrews

An 18th century Italian design based on Baroque/Rocco principles

And almost done

The overlook at the National History Museum

Remains of the oldest church in from Kyiv

10th century burned by Mongols

And a final Ukrainian

SIGNS OF THE WORLD

Lift using your Knees!

Don't Shade the Grass with you Shoes Please

Do Not Fly Your Drone

While Smoking and Bike Riding!