Day 10 - Taxi's and Borsht

 Whoops! Haven't written in quite the while! I've started getting to the point that I wake up with just enough time to get ready for school. It's Sunday now, so I finally have some free time to catch you up a bit on the goings on in Ukraine. These last few days have been extremely cold, but I have found some relief in the transportation systems as of late. On Saturday, I had to go clean the church, so me and the others that signed up (Kasen, Clint, and Cierra) decided to take a taxi instead of walking, taking the metro, taking a bus, then walking some more. It saved SO much time, and so much effort too! It ended up costing us about 71 grivnas, which turns out to be less than 7 dollars total; less than 2 dollars per person. The ride was totally worth the 20 grivna though, I think I wrote some last week about the long trek to church; this time, it was much much easier. Cleaning the church was easy, it's a small building and there were four of us plus a family there cleaning just one hallway. We finished in about half an hour, then stood in the hallway and talked for a while. One of the couple missionaries there invited us over to their place where they would give us some good numbers that we can use for getting taxis from the church (right next to the temple too!) and our homes. We stayed their for about an hour or so talking about this and that.

We got a taxi ride back home, then me and one of the others decided to go over to Marie's apartment where we were going to learn how to make Borsht (the traditional Ukrainian way). I really feel like I'm learning a LOT about public transportation here. We took the bus to Marie's, and didn't get lost even ONCE. It was so fun to visit with everyone there. Anyways, about the Borsht; I'll post the recipe eventually, but it was SO tasty! Tania, our coordinator (the one to the right of the wall-rug in the picture above), told us all about it. We also got to talk about vacations there too, but I'll talk about that another time.
Borcsh Recipe!! (*Directly from Tania's e-mail to us)

Cook broth from any kind of meat: one hour simmering.

Put beet root (peeled) and let it simmer for another half an hour.

Take this beet root out of broth and let it cool.

Put shredded carrot in the broth,

Peel and cut into small cubicles potato – in the broth,

Slice cabbage, press with salt  - in the broth,

Take one chopped onion+ a little bit of garlic+ salt --- press until juicy and put in the broth,

Shred the beet root – in the broth,

One tomato (shredded) or one table spoon of tomato catch-up – in the broth,

Now salt and pepper to your taste, put one bay leave and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes.

You may also add sweet paprika – it makes the taste richer.

Vareniky Recipe (Another Ukrainian Classic)

 Dough

  3 c. Flour

  ½ tsp. Salt

  1 egg

  1 c. water or sour milk (if you use water, add a spoon full of sour cream)

            Mix the ingredients all together until dough forms a ball. Turn out onto a generously floured table. Kneed the dough for about five minutes, or until dough is firm.

Filling-1 - Mashed potato without milk

Filling-2 - Cottage cheese – a little bit of salt, sugar + 1 egg (if not too watery)

Filling-3 - Wild cherries – add some sugar to each varenik, eat cool

Filling-4 - Meat – boil meat till cooked and then grind it, add chopped and fried onion, salt, pepper.