Stahlke Adoption

Christmas Eve, Part VI

With the kutya, our table was filled with the first round of dishes:

Uzvar, or "God's drink," is a delicious cold punch, served at room temperature. It is prepared with copious amounts of stewed fruit (prunes, pears, apricots, apples) that have been soaked in honey. Like the 12 dishes in the meal itself, the types of fruit can also be as many as twelve. Later in the meal, the children were offered soft drinks, and the adults drank hot tea.

Three kinds of bread were served: rye bread, bread rolls with apricot filling, and pampushky. The latter are deep-fried doughnuts with fruit filling.

Two dishes of fish graced our table, as well. One was a delicious baked fish in tomato sauce, while the other was salted, pickled herring (oseledsi). I'm accustomed to pickled and creamed herring from my Swedish roots, but the Ukrainian version is much, much saltier. No wonder our kids love salt! They devoured the herring and asked for repeated servings. Jonathan commented that one small bite contains your salt allotment for the week.

posted by Stahlkes @ 9:55 AM