Last night’s dinner was really wonderful for a few reasons:
That's salo in the back
1) The food: A lot of commenters have asked about the taste of the food. I wish I could post that. My favorite taste last night was the cherry varenyky dessert. They are like dumplings filled with cherries — not too sweet, but you can dip them in honey. Yum! One of the weirdest things I’ve tried is salo — which is basically lard. It looks like folded meat or bacon, but it’s a white color. You can see it in the video above. It’s not actually that bad! It tastes smokey, sort of like bacon.
2) The people: We dined with Lydia and several of her co-workers. Everyone is really sweet. One of the most fun things about traditional meals here is the toasts. People usually do many toasts! It’s traditional that the first toast is to health, and then the second one is to friendship. Usually after that, the third one is to women, or love, and then sometimes there are many more. Last night, there were lots of toasts to our new friendship, and the friendship between the U.S. and Ukraine.
3) The music: We got a surprise treat and were serenaded by a wonderful guitar player, Alex Starykowsky. He makes his own musical instruments and has different ones he created from all over the world. His music was really spectacular and livened up the evening, as you can see in the video. There was a lot of singing along and merriment.
Categories: Ukraine
Innovation on Earth 
sorry i couldn’t come on earlier today, but i was really busy. now, i finally have time to come here!
i checked out the video. all those food looked absolutely delicious!!! my mouth is watering right after watching the video, and reading your description of the cherry varenyky dessert, and the salo.
based on your descriptions, i think the cherry varenyky dessert is delicious too! i feel like i’ve seen the salo meat somewhere before….. but i’m not sure where, and i don’t think it was the same meat when i saw it though. it just looks a bit familiar.
that’s cool how Alez makes his own instruments! i wonder how long it would take for someone to make one, especially by hand. but, in the video, his instruments look really, well, perfect! it looks just like an instrument made by a company!
the songs were great, too! i loved the tune of all of them! do you think you can understand what the gist of the song was about when Alex sung a song in Ukrainian? or was it translated at the end of the video?
the party that you described above reminds me of a traditional Christmas party, located somewhere in the woods in a log cabin/log house. it must’ve been really fun to go there!
best wishes!
😉
The music there was really fun and he made cool instriments. I like the things you wrote it was really GREAT!!!!!! BP
The BP was supposed to turn into a smily face.
I love his guitar! Its so different, with the curl and I love the sound of the music.
Wow! Which food was your favorite?
Wow there instruments are very interesting to look at I wish I could learn how to play one
That sounds amazing!!!!