New Year, 1 January 2018
A new year greeting, and a note on the one dish that appears on every table regardless of anything else.
A happy new year to everyone.
Whatever else is on a Ukrainian new year table, there is a bowl of salad made of boiled potato, carrot, pickled cucumber, peas and a great deal of mayonnaise. It is prepared in a quantity that assumes visitors who may not arrive, and it is still being eaten on the third of January.
Nobody claims it is refined. Everybody makes it. A colleague once explained to me, entirely seriously, that a new year without it would feel wrong in a way she could not justify.
That is what a tradition is: something people do without a defence for it, which nonetheless produces a room that feels correct.
A good year to your house, and to whoever peeled the potatoes.
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