Mom and Me in the Ukrainian Weekly

On Mother's Day this year, I found an article from a 1966 edition of The Ukrainian Weekly that featured my late mother and her rock art. This article was written by Helen "Scoop" Smindak, a dear family friend, who wrote another article about me and my borscht-making (or, as Helen would more correctly, Ukrainianly spell it, borsch-making) in 2008. How many mother-daughter teams get such special treatment by the same journalist? It was wonderful to come across Helen's 1966 article and read about my 31-year-old mother living her "conservative bohemian" life on the Upper West Side, and hope you'll enjoy it too. For good measure I included the article Helen wrote about me 42 years later.

84 degrees in the shade. Antidote: Kusmi Be Cool tea, iced.

Whew! It's a scorcher this first day of May. As we wait for news from the hospital that my dad can come home after angioplasty, I went to Zabar's and got some treats, including this new tea from Kousmichoff (their Zoubrovka, Prince Vladimir, and Samovar varieties are my favorites when I'm throwing a borscht party).

Mint provides refreshment, liquorice and anise sweetness, apple and verbena notes a herbal green quality, and rosehips a dark tart note that just feels more interesting among all the other clean light flavors. I put three teabags in 8 oz of boiling water and let steep 6 minutes, then poured over ice. Ahhh.

Kusmi has a press release that notes their first North American store has opened in Montreal (a city well worth visiting for many other reasons). How delightful it would be to sample their teas at this boutique, and flip through their cookbook (although this only seems to be available in French for now)....