Story
“Love makes tasty food”, - that’s my own slogan during last year. I like to visit food festivals and food fairs. The result of this hobby places is that I fell in love a year ago. The way I did this was really magic. Even today I realize that food made my love and life. As I’ve mentioned I like food festivals, so I visited “Best Food Fest&Health Festival” in late 2012 (www.bff.kiev.ua). This annualy fest is the most popular in Ukraine. During that days a cute girl noticed me at the Fest. She worked as a volunteer there. We made our day and after that we started dating. Soon we found out lots of similar things each of us likes to do.
I will never forget the day Kate’s parents met me for the first time. That day Kate’s mother cooked different salads, baked potatoes and rabbit under a red wine sauce with herbs. I shpuld admit, that Kate’s mom is fond of cooking. Me and Kate presented culinary book of Juliya Vysotskaya (famous Russian and Ukrainian cooker) on her birthday. She has already started to cook with this book.
What I learned spending time on her kitchen is that her home chef’s dish is pilaf. She told me the story: when she was a student (25 yrs ago), one of her group mate was from Uzbekistan, and he taught her how to cook pilaf in perfect way. In perfect, I mean, because motherland of pilaf is Uzbekistan. Well, I proposed my girlfriend to welcome her parents to our home. My aim was to impress my future mother-in-law with my variant of pilaf. I decided to cook pilaf with mussels for several reasons:
1) seafood is gaining popularity in Ukraine;
2) rice with mussels and a glass of good Italian wine is fantastic;
3) I studied English, Spanish and Polish, but my girlfriend studied Italian and all her family loves Mediterranean cuisine, especially Italian ones.
4) I’ve never seen pilaf with mussels in Ukraine. Of course, lots of restaurants chefs do this, but personally I didn’t taste this kind of dish in restaurants;
5) I found rice with mussels to be magic as my love to Kate is.
What’s the result of my cooking and what was the impression of Kate’s mommy? Huh, I’ll tell you briefly and confidentially: I’m looking for a wedding soon ;-)
In conclusion, I’m confident that our love and friendship are unique. Me and Kate adore cooking every day. Sometimes we compete about who will do breakfast or supper. What is interesting, I heard about this scholarship from Kate. What a wonderful everyday life we have!
By and large, I would suggest to everybody: “Love makes tasty food, so don’t forget It{aly}. Bon Apetit!
Motivation Letter:
I have lots of dreams. I live with dreams. And I live to dream. One of them is to create digital web magazine where gastronomy news will be posted from all over the world. I realized what Ukrainians need, so I want just do it. I noticed that it’s very important to improve gastronomy culture for Ukrainians. In my digital web magazine I want to post news about tableware, modern kitchen furniture and design overall, special recipes from top world chefs, monthly review of gastronomy newspapers’ and magazines such as “Saveur” or “Gourmet”, world culinary news etc. I’m also planning to do culinary master-classes for children with the help of best Ukrainian and Italian chefs. And I also want to create “open society culinary zones” in big cities in Ukraine where everybody may welcome his/her friends and conduct culinary master-class.
Moreover, Ukraine is very contrastive in the meaning of its cuisine. I really want to take part in CantForgetItaly, because it will give me invaluable experience in one of the best gastronomic countries – Italy. I desire to cognize local Italian food lovers, talk to food photographs and journalists, and looking forward to meet some famous Italian chefs.
I’m Ukrainian and I dream to help Ukrainians be smart in gastronomy such as Italians are and even better. J And I dream to open Ukrainian cuisine to the whole world. No matter what Ukrainian region represents varenyky (pierogi) or borsch, but EuroMaidan showed that all Ukrainians are united and peaceful.
