Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Today we are discussing the last year by Katherine Marsh.

Will be preparing Ukrainian food to accompany the story of a family forced into starvation during the 1930s in Stalin's Russia.

Why did this happen?

And who are the characters in this book who suffered decades of abuse?

Let's meet my favorite guests.

South Bend School Superintendent Todd Cummings, who reviewed this book for middle school students.

Welcome.

I'm thrilled to be here with Michiana legend Gail Martin.

Thank you.

I'm thrilled to be here with the school superintendent of South Bend.

This is quite a book.

And I, before we start doing her cooking, what are Ukrainian food?

Tell me how you chose this book.

Or is the group chose it?

How and why and whatever.

Sure.

So every year we have a middle school battle of the book competition, and librarians from all over the district choose a group of middle school level books.

They each have a team or two and this year, on May 9th, they'll have a competition.

I have a team made up of school board members, and this will be our fifth year of losing to middle schoolers.

Well, you must have a good school system in South Bend.

We think so.

Oh, I think that's terrific.

You get to meet the students and see how they react and what they absorb.

I like that.

And they meet like a club every week.

And so I stop by and I ask them what they're reading.

And it's fun to see them carry their books around or read graphic novels.

And today you've chosen yet another book that I can't give the ending away of.

No you can't.

The Lost Year was one of my favorites.

It really is a super book, and I say kudos to the middle school kids that read it because it has some twists and turns, and you do have to know a little history and you really have to get all these characters straight.

And I took me several times reading it, but we want to make Ukrainian food today.

I'm going to make borscht, which is I think we hear about this a lot in the book.

This is one of the favorite foods of central and Eastern Europe.

Russians like borsch, the Georgians.

And of course, the Ukrainians.

It's made with vegetables and beets and, it sounds unusual, but once you learn to love it, it's just there all the time in your mind.

And I will also do a cabbage salad that, a Russian friend had shared with me.

And what are you going to do?

I am making pierogies.

And as I try to get more vegetables in my diet.

I'm going to add green peas.

I have a soft spot in my heart for pierogi, so I'm going to make those with some green peas.

Good.

And then you've got a special drink over here.

I do.

I don't know if I can give it away just yet.

Why we chose this beer.

Okay.

Hold it, hold it and tell us when you're ready.

Okay.

All right, so, I, I want to discuss this this dish, obviously, but we have a family that is spread out there, some in Ukraine, some in the United States.

And we go back and forth in time sometimes.

I can't remember if we're in Brooklyn, new Jersey or keys, the capital of, Ukraine and who the characters are.

Oh, there's so many of them.

And, in so many secret characters, too.

Like, we don't know that one of the daughters, has a father who is a member of the Stalin inner circle, and he does a lot to disturb people and to create.

We don't know this in the beginning, but he is not a very good person.

He's not a very good person.

And I think and I thought for middle schoolers, the graphic ness of the hunger of the starvation one, I thought they often did a really good job.

But you do have to understand the history of the time.

Yes.

And it was dark, very, very dark.

I mean, for a leader to take all of the vegetables, the animals from the farms, they wanted to create state farms.

And that was the people were forced to give their land up to the government to make state farms, collective farms, and, and if you didn't, you were hounded and even killed.

And some of these and they were called kulaks.

These were the more wealthy peasants out in the, countryside.

And I have to say, I was in, in Ukraine and Russia during a period where we went to the state farms and the people would jump off their tractors or their horses and run and hide from us because we were Americans and they were not to speak to us.

Interesting.

And we were supposed to speak to them, but we tried.

At least the men did, because they wanted to talk about farming things.

And the, Russian and Ukrainian men didn't want to talk about it.

This was a terrible period where Stalin forced the starvation of over 6 million of his people.

And why was that?

To enrich the people that controlled the the government.

And, you know, it sounds like things are happening like that again in Ukraine today.

And, and there's an interesting side story that involves the New York Times and a reporter.

And I had to stop.

Yes.

And Google.

I wanted to make sure it was factual, but you stop.

And how a New York Times reporter went reported this wasn't the case, but in fact had won the Pulitzer for a made up story.

And it is a fascinating, I would say.

Side note.

Yes.

So this entire tale, well, it shows about how, you know, publishers and writers are controlled sometimes by these, the owners of the newspapers.

And he said, oh, there's nothing going on.

Everybody's fine in Russia.

But the people who had families there knew different because their families were imploring them to send money.

Right.

Which sometimes was taken out of the mail anyway.

But in this case, they would send jewelry, they would send other trinkets for them to pawn.

But it was the families and the letters that help put the story together.

Well.

And so this is this is the basics of this story.

And I think it's very interesting.

These young people are reading about this.

We didn't have anything like this in middle school right?

We read nice little stories and didn't upset anybody.

And but this really brings attention and I think it's excellent to what is going on in the rest of the world.

I think one thing that stuck out for me, this is one of the first young adult novels I've read that's based during Covid, and we forget we all went home, we all shut down.

We didn't.

You know, we wouldn't let our Amazon packages into our house.

And so this family is facing the same thing.

It was really interesting to revisit that.

Those 18 months.

Matthews is the one who has his, what do you call it?

His, he call it Stella or something.

He's playing these games and and it happened in every home.

I'm sure they're playing under the bed when they're playing the games instead of reading their books.

But he he is part of the story.

And it comes back to Matthew.

It comes back to Mila, comes back to Mom and Dad.

Yes.

So, I'm going to I'm just going to heat up, okay, to get this thing going here.

Although I did start with cooking some of this ahead of time because it just takes so much time to cook and chop.

And here we are.

I have celery and onion, carrots, and I have cook them, and I have in here about four little beets that I've chopped up.

And we have beets in here, some more onion.

We have some red pepper.

And I am going to put in some tomato sauce.

And I love I love to use the paste because I don't buy the cans anymore because I think the cans of this kind of stuff, they spoil.

You don't use, you never use a whole pan.

So it just sits there and turns black.

So I'm going to do this.

And we do hear this soup mentioned many times.

The family is having it.

And in, in Russia at the time of these state farms, the people could have they could grow their own vegetables, but only around the front of the house.

So they had some of the best vegetables in all of Ukraine and Russia, where vegetables grown around the house of the farm house and food didn't really play an important part in the book.

No.

And I know when you ask me beyond, I reviewed the book I googled.

But food doesn't play an important part in the book, which I only sort of interesting, only in the sense that they had borscht.

Right?

And they had none.

And yes, borscht.

And of course, starvation is is the central theme here.

Now I've got this heated up.

We're going to add some beans and I'm going to add the juice with them some I like cannelloni, they will use whatever they have.

And of course they probably soaked them all night.

And we're going to get this going.

And you have peas with your with my pierogis.

We're going to drain those during the break.

We're going to add some sour cream and we'll be ready to go.

This is our meal.

And, and I have to say I like borscht, I really do.

I think it's wonderful.

So we have we have a lot of turmoil in this book.

It's not a fun book.

It's not.

It's not only in the sense that we're going back and forth in time, and this young boy is supposed to entertain his 100 year old grandmother during Covid, during Covid, and they finally decide they're going to go through boxes of her memoirs.

And this is how we find out what was going on in Ukraine and the letters that you mentioned earlier that people had sent.

And, young man puts all of this, all of this together with the grandmother.

Yes.

And we we find out that a family member takes the place of another family member.

People die.

People are moved to new Jersey.

Some are moving to another state, like Brooklyn, another city.

And I think what I'll do is put these vegetables in here now, because I precooked them, because I don't like to stand and watch little vegetables cook.

And so now we have all this in here.

Now, if I, if I could have found, some black bread, I would have added it and this would have been part of our meal.

But right now we're going to take a little break and get ready to discuss the next part of the book, and we'll talk more about the food and, of course, the characters, and we'll be right back.

In the meantime, you could look at the menu of our meal today.

All right.

And now we're adding the real identifier of borscht.

A little bit of dill, and I, you know, it's usually a tablespoon or so.

And it depends on whether you like it.

I grew to love dill, and I think it's such a magnificent, herb.

And you, we have this.

We have our salad that we're making a Ukrainian salad, and you are pouring French beer.

Now, why French beer?

Well, one, you can't be on dinner on a book without alcohol.

And we've done.

We've had bourbon, we've had moonshine.

And today, French beer.

Kronenbourg 1664.

So thank you to our friends at City Wide Liquors.

Dad is in France.

Oh, yes.

Matthew's father is in France.

And so I thought we needed a little bit of French flavor for for the for the cheers.

Yes.

That's drive.

Yeah.

My first time trying it.

It's good.

It's a little sweet.

It is.

And that's not bad.

It's I like it, I like it.

Yeah.

Yes.

Matthew father is a writer in Paris and we aren't sure he gets stuck there because it's Covid time and we don't really know when we first meet him what he's really doing, doing.

We don't.

And Matthew continues to call and email him.

And he's got a big trip planned to go see his dad.

But as we know, it's Covid and no one's going to travel.

So we know that in the book.

And so he's my dad's a reporter, and that causes the framework of how Matthew works with grandmother investigating all of her papers.

Yes.

And the mother of Matthew says, I want you to help grandma.

She's she's really she's getting decrepit.

She's 100 years old.

And so he goes through boxes with her and finds all kinds of things about the family's history and and actually until the very end, like the last page, do we really have some things come together and you sort of go, oh, I should have recognized it, I should have.

You're right.

No, no, it is right at the end in the next three with you I.

How did I not see this coming.

How did I not put this together?

Yes, I totally agree.

It was it was a surprise up until the very end.

Well.

And and actually it took a while for this to come together as a plan in the book.

I mean, like, he's complaining and grandma's complaining and she's got aches and pains and they take her for walks, and yet she is there.

And finally he and his grandmother go through the books and he asks her questions about pictures.

And this is how he found out about Ludmilla.

Who is Mila?

And then we have Helen, and we have Nadia, and we have this cast of characters.

And grandmother is not always forthcoming, you know, and she's a little, maybe not a little bit.

A lot difficult, yes.

And doesn't speak terrific English.

And, but they speak they all speak Ukrainian.

So it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

But it it is a tired person.

She has been through everything.

She has seen everything.

She has seen members of her family die from the starvation.

And she is she doesn't want to go through these pictures right away because they are very sad.

And they remind her of people and her life as a child.

But slowly, the young man, Matthew, brings her out and he says, I want to know more about your life, grandma.

And she finally starts showing him pictures about things.

And that's where we find out who Nadia became.

Mila and Mila became, I won't say, but, how all these people came to New York.

Some stayed in Kiev, which I used to call something else, and I went to Kiev.

I was there right after the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s.

And, I, I really didn't know.

I was kind of naive about what was going on.

But the people were kind.

They were tense.

They were serious.

My suitcase did not arrive the third day.

I had to leave and I came into the hotel and the Ukrainian lady sitting at the desk, she went, it's here, your suitcase.

And so, you know, it finally came.

But you, you have these little things going on with people you don't know you can't even talk to.

But it was so interesting.

And, more things I just love my trip to Ukraine.

And my friend and I, I met my friend internet, which now has been obliterated, and she was teaching law there to the students and we met with them.

I mean, it was such an interesting experience, I have to say.

And anyway, that was that was my experience.

And then you remember reading about the ambassador, American ambassador to the Ukraine, who was of Ukrainian background, and she was in the Senate, right.

And and she got involved.

And, now she's teaching at George George Georgetown.

Georgetown.

Yes.

And so my son saw her walking on the street.

He lives in D.C., and I said, did you go up and say hello?

He said, no, I really didn't know what to say.

And I said, well, maybe if I see her, I got to talk to her.

Well, anyway, this is your ready here.

I'm ready here.

You've got a little, what's inside here?

That is potato and onions.

Okay.

That's good.

And then you've got a little dollop of sour cream.

My green peas.

Because I'm adding more vegetables to my diet.

All right.

So what I'm going to do here is here's this cabbage.

You have less lettuce and more cabbage.

And I think it's because cabbage, you can grow so many heads of cabbage around the house, around the farm.

And, chopped up some red pepper.

Usually I have cucumber in here and carrots.

And then I add some more of the favorite.

A favorite herb of Ukrainians and Russians is the dill.

And my dressing is sort of interesting.

It's a mayonnaise.

Or you can use the, light mayonnaise and add some sugar to it.

And that becomes the dressing for this salad.

And I love it.

And again, some people say, oh, cabbage.

Who who eats cabbage?

It's another thing that you get used to if you're in a certain country.

And I did have a cousin who married a Ukrainian.

He was a ballet dancer.

Oh, I mean, really, we got Ukrainians everywhere.

And, and he liked this kind of food.

And so, Ukraine is really in my heart.

I mean, I've been there and I've met the people, and I've met the people that have moved who's left to come to the United States and are living in Goshen.

And there is a Ukrainian church in Goshen, out in the countryside, and I've done Easter eggs there.

I mean, mine were the worst of the bunch.

Everybody had a beautiful design.

Mine look like I didn't know my left hand from my right hand, but I tried.

And so we can be influenced close up by so many things going on.

And I think that's really valuable, especially with this book.

And I found myself having to Google places people, yes.

What was going on the back stories.

So I found myself having to stop and Google what what was going on, what was I missing.

But I thought Katherine Marsh told a really fascinating story.

And again, you picked another book.

I can't give the ending away.

But no, you can't.

And the thing is, Katherine is is for Ukrainian background.

And so she knew about this, her pictures in the book.

And I listened on audible.

Yeah.

And she does a profile at the very end of the book, and she talks about her writing process.

She talks about how she came up with the story and her time with her grandmother, and the latter.

It was interesting to hear how she came up with the process of finishing the book.

It is like time traveling to, you know.

Exactly.

And I had think to myself, now, is that Matthew, who's in Brooklyn or is he where is he?

Right.

He's in new Jersey.

I had to stop a few times.

Where are the characters?

What's going on?

Who is home?

So.

But it was a good device.

And of course it's used so often to they in writing time, traveling back and forth in time.

And we do go back and forth the 30s during the period of starvation, Stalin's imposed starvation.

And now I feel I feel so sorry for Ukraine.

I just think they've had they've been pushed around and they, they and, Belarus and and Moldova were a part of the Russian Federation, and it was Khrushchev that allowed those countries to become free.

And of course, now you know what's going on.

Russia wants it back.

And and it's got wonderful land for growing vegetables.

So anyway, here is our, Russian, Ukrainian salad.

You find this everywhere.

And I think when you travel, it is a good idea to try the food of the country.

Well, when we we were talking earlier, when we travel, we bring back our favorite things.

So we bring back, wine, cheese and butter.

Yes.

So butter.

You're testing the, the different cows in all these countries and see who produces is the best.

You like butter and cheese, butter and cheese.

Well, now we're going to but we're going to be, getting our soup ready here.

Well just do one of them and I'll have a little of the, Oh, sour sour cream.

This is a must.

And you can have as little or as much as you want, and then a dollop of sour cream.

Sometimes they use yogurt.

Well, and I'm going to put a final touch of, dollop of sour cream.

And of course, you can use yogurt because it's, you know, it's a little more healthy, but this tastes better.

In any case.

We will just take a short break, and we're going to talk about, the picture the people in this book.

We'll show you some pictures and the old fashion pictures from the 30s.

And I hope you enjoy them.

And then we'll be right back.

Well, Todd, let's go over the food once more.

Tell us what you made here.

So I googled Ukrainian food, and I made pierogies.

And since I'm trying to eat more vegetables, I added peas.

And then we used sour cream on top.

Or you could also use yogurt for the pierogies.

And there are potato and onion filled.

That's a wonderful dish.

And I think it's great with the salad.

In the soup there's a whole meal.

And then the French wine.

Beer.

What did you think of it?

So I want to say thank you to our friends at, City wide Liquors, because the dad is in France.

Yeah.

So we wanted to have a theme, and so we went with French beer.

I'm not a beer drinker, but it was a little bit weedy and sweet, but it was interesting.

I'm glad we.

I'm glad we tried it.

I'm glad so, too.

It was very good.

And I made the borscht with, again some more of our sour cream.

And then we have the salad, the white cabbage salad with veggies, and then some mayonnaise with sugar.

And of course, here's our book.

The last year and the last years, we decide, is the reference to Covid, right, that these young people we're dealing with like ours here as well.

I like the book.

I had trouble sometimes with the time element going back and forth, and who was in Kiev and who was in, in, new Jersey.

But, and I loved the grandmother.

What a character.

What a life in pictures.

And, what did you like?

So I like the book.

I like the reference to Covid.

I liked how it had, young protagonist who was interacting with his grandmother, who was irascible at times.

And then I love the, love the ending again.

I can't get you.

Can't give it away.

Give it away.

We're so glad you were here with us.

Thank you.

Todd.

Thank you.

Always fun to have you.

Well, it's always a pleasure to be here.

Legend of Michigan.

And thank you.

Oh, good food, good friends.

Good books make for a very good life.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

This Wnit, local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.