How to Help People in Ukraine Through #CookForUkraine

[Celerity]

These fundraisers are sending donations to relief organizations while celebrating Ukrainian cuisine.

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/cook-for-ukraine



When my wife Trina and I started Dacha 46, a queer Jewish Eastern European pop-up project celebrating Eastern European food, it was a business venture, but also a deep dive into my cultural roots and a way to rediscover my identity.

My parents grew up in Soviet Russia. The majority of my childhood, I would tell people I was Russian. They would ask where I was from—regardless of the fact that I was born in New York—after hearing my mom’s thick accent or learning of my dad’s name, Boris, or seeing my brown-bag lunches of chopped liver sandwiches or butter and caviar black bread tartines. It wasn’t until much later, in high school even, that I realized that wasn’t entirely true. I’m Latvian Ukrainian, a fact I now take deep pride in.

This past week, after the entire world watched as Putin invaded Ukraine, the hashtag #cookforukraine began trending on Instagram. The movement—in which chefs seek to raise both awareness of Ukrainian cuisine and money for various aid organizations—was started by London-based chefs and authors Olia Hercules and Alissa Timoshkina, two people Trina and I greatly respect and admire for their thoughtful and comprehensive support of Ukrainian and Russian culture and cuisine. We’ve since seen many fundraisers popping up all across the world, selling cheesecakes, hosting piroshki pop-ups, teaching virtual varenyky cooking classes, and donating millions of dollars to vital organizations such as Razom, World Central Kitchen, and UNICEF UK.

From here in Brooklyn, Dacha 46 teamed up with 11 incredible local chefs to sell pastry boxes and raise funds for several organizations providing assistance to people in Ukraine, such as Razom, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation. Each chef baked an Eastern European-inspired pastry, so we offered goods like strudel, piroshki, medovik, and mak bulochki—and sold out in a matter of hours.

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