Cook's Corner

Cooking Triumphs (Ukrainian and American recipes):
varenyky (5 hours and one headlamp later);
syrniki (delicious pancakes made with a cheese that’s like a cross between feta and ricotta);
borshch;
cabbage lasagna (outstanding success due largely to the tastiness of the contents of mystery jar #2, which turned out to contain a deliciously spicy sweet tomato sauce that someone so kindly made and canned and left in my apartment);
homemade sauerkraut (chop up cabbage and let it sit in brine for 2 weeks, stir occasionally and presto! sauerkraut);
plov (raisins were a good addition, rice was a little crunchy on the bottom though), sweet rice pie (again, successful largely due to the canning skills of an unknown benefactor who left cherry preserves in the apartment, but my end of the deal needs work);
holubtsi (bringing back the family tradition!);
sour cabbage soup;
honey carrots, honey orange beets, apple and carrot salad, carrot and raisin salad (do we see a pattern here?);
poached chicken and apples (my new favorite chicken dish);
fried chicken fingers;
chili;
mac and cheese;
carrot bread;
carrot cake;
cinnamon rolls;
apple crisp;
sugar cookies;
Hungarian goulash;
chocolate chip cookies (second time’s a charm);
Southern fried apples (you can’t go wrong adding butter and sugar);
a reuben (with homemade dressing and sauerkraut);
split pea soup (with chunks of lard that I’ve also been eating sliced thinly on brown bread);
stuffed beets (we need to eat this vegetable more in America),
apple pie with walnuts;
Russian vegetable pie (cabbage, carrots, onions, mushrooms, domashniy syr, and hard-boiled eggs in a pie pastry)

…and Tribulations:
deruny (didn’t squeeze all the water out);
salat olivie (not mayonnaise-y enough for Ukrainian standards);
pelmeni (tasty but ugly);
pierozhky (tasty when made with my host mom, less so when attempted solo);
cream of mushroom soup (definitely had some dirt in there, too much bother to fully clean all the mushrooms);
potato leek soup (not creamy enough);
a whole lot of walnut cracking with a meat tenderizer (often revealing moldy insides but yielding enough from the bag of unshelled walnuts I found in the apartment for a few days of good eating);
chocolate chip cookies (crunchy and flat);
thickened sauerkraut (I reused the lard bits from my split pea soup but they got charred and I added too much liquid from my homemade sauerkraut so it was heart-attack salty)