I came across a lovely, peaceful video of a woman preparing a feast of Vareniki (Pierogi). The woman lives in the Carpathian mountains of eastern Ukraine, in a small village of Dzembronya, in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.
The video reminds me of Ashe County, North Carolina, perhaps at the turn of the last century.
Life is so much different in this video! To prepare the meal, she first prepares the cheese curd, gathers rose hips for tea, gathers the firewood and prepares the fire, sifts the flour, prepares the vareniki, cuts some salt pork for frying an onion, boils the dumplings….
These stills are from the video channel Food Around The World. It is a fascinating channel and a great way to connect to people in eastern Europe.
This video (and the stills below) are from the video channel Food Around The World. It is a fascinating channel and a great way to connect to people in eastern Europe.
Join us on an exciting journey through the most amazing places in the world, where each episode is a new adventure, rich in flavors and stories. On the Food from Around the World channel, we don’t just taste food; we explore how food connects people, shapes cultures and enlivens traditions.
She prepares the cheese curd for the vareniki filling and sifts the flour.
She gathers firewood for the stove.
She prepares the dough.
Next, she cuts out the vareniki dough circles, stuffs them, and prepares them for cooking.
She cooks the vareniki in the boiling water.
Now she prepares some salt pork (I think) to be used to fry an onion.
The onion and pork mixture are used to flavor the vareniki.
Now she prepares the rose hip tea.
And finally, after a long day’s work, she serves this beautiful meal.
A Little Background
Dzembronia (Ukrainian: Дземброня) is a village in the Verkhovyna Raion of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast of Ukraine. It is located in the southeast of the Chornohora. It forms part of Zelene rural hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.
Geography Dzembronia is located on 12 km (7.5 mi) long creek also named Dzembronia and 130 km (81 mi) south of Ivano-Frankivsk and 21 km (13 mi) southwest of Verkhovyna. It is regarded as the highest village in Ukraine.
Elevation: 896 m (2,940 ft) Population (2001): 246
So, 0.41% of 242 is 0.9922. Let’s round up. That means that there is 1.0 persons in Dzembronia that speaks Moldovan. I wonder if they are looking for someone to chat with?
We must also mention that the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, with the full-scale invasion occurring on February 24th, 2022.
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014. Following Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas War.
Slate has an interesting article on the village of Dzembronia. The article, written in October 2016, is titled No Peace in the Valley / Echoes of War and reflects the impact the war had, even in the early days.
The article features 73 year old Dzembronia resident Maria Illyuk. Maria is a warm, generous woman who hosts the author of the piece in her home and informal bed and breakfast.
Electricity pylons were installed in the late 1960s, a mountain spring was connected to the taps around 10 years ago, and firewood burned in an enormous, ornate hearth provides the heat.
I asked Pani Maria what else had changed during the half-century of life here. “All the farms were collectivized under the Soviets, so it was nice to get our land back in the 1990s,” she replied. “And since Communism ended, we can start going to church again.”
When you watch the above video of the woman’s daily life on a small farm in Dzembronia, you will get a sense of how insane the idea of collective farming was, and what hardship the Soviet empire caused.
Maria, speaking in 2018….
I asked her if boredom was a problem. “I have no time to be bored,” she laughed. “There is too much work, and I read a lot.” With a more serious look, she added: “In the evenings, I pray for peace in Ukraine. I pray that the war will end soon, that the enemy will leave us.”
It was an unexpected reference that caught me off guard. Even in this secluded idyll, hundreds of miles from the eastern front, it is impossible to escape the specter of war.
