Every morning when Anya Levykh was a child, shed have a caviar sandwich for breakfast.
I ate it not because we were rich, but because we were poor, Lenykh says, relaxing in the living room of her South Vancouver home.
She was born in Odessa, a Ukrainian town on the Black Sea and, at the time, part of the all-controlling USSR. Apart from seafood such as herring, smelt and sturgeon, there werent many food choices. And what food there was came at the end of a long line up.
My mother had to find creative ways of supplying me with vitamins, says Levykh, well known for her blog, Food Girl Friday, and contributions to CBC Radios On the Coast and Eat Magazine. My mother would also grind cooked egg shells in a mortar and sprinkle it on my food for added calcium.
Its her mothers cooking that enriches many of Anyas childhood memories. Today, as the mother of Maya, a seven-year-old highly active dancer, Levykhs sharing what she learned in her mothers kitchen with her daughter, whos already becoming a true foodie.
On June 30, all three generations of Levykhs will be sharing their family recipe for Olivier Potatoes at Joy of Feeding, a celebration of the act of breaking bread with one another. Professional and home chefs from across Vancouver will converge at UBC Farm to share the food that nourishes their souls, while raising money for UBC Farms programs.
Levykhs first food memory is of a tomato. It was a completely luxurious item in Russia, she says. One tomato cost one ruble at a time when people were earning only one or two hundred rubles a month. But her neighbour would sometimes buy one and put it on the table for young Anya to steal.
The family left Russia when Anya was seven; she was 11 by the time they landed in Vancouver. I remember the first time I was invited to dinner at a friends house. Her mother made Kraft Dinner and cut up some hot dogs to put in it. Id never seen that in my life. My mother doesnt do boxes! She was looking for organic and sustainable and free range before those words were used.
One trip to a chain grocery store, where the chicken was an unnatural white, convinced Anyas mother that shed have to search farther afield for unprocessed foods all the way to the farmers field itself if thats what it took. One time she bought the farm; rather, she bought the entire stock of 80 chickens, filling the freezer so she wouldnt have to worry about where her food was coming from for quite some time. She also bought an ostrich and had it butchered for many, many family meals. (Do you know how big an ostrich is, Levykh says with a laugh. It is like buying a cow.)
I didnt realize how lucky I was to have a mom who cooked the way she did, says Levykh who, as a child, went through a brief phase of wanting food like all the kids at school were eating. It didnt last long though her mothers cooking was just so much better.
As a mother herself, Levykh has deliberately set out to introduce Maya to as many foods as possible. Maya loves her mothers cooking and the other day, when Maya wasnt feeling her usual boisterous self, she asked her mother to make one of her favourite dishes homemade chicken broth soup with chicken feet. Without so much as a euh or yuck, Maya contentedly sat at the kitchen table to devour what her mother calls Jewish penicillin.
Maya prefers baking to cooking what seven-year-old wouldnt? but she loves most foods, from salmon sashimi to beef tongue to spaghetti. The only thing Maya doesnt like? Onions and peppers, cooked or raw.
I wasnt going to be one of those mothers who cooked two meals, one for themselves and one for their child, Levykh says. When you start them off with variety, they dont know any different.
Tickets to Joy of Feeding are $50 each. Go to JoyOfFeeding.com for tickets and participating chefs.
