Anastasie Vondra

“Czech food - that’s halushky, dumplings, kyselachka [sour] soup is cooked... Kyselachka is cooked... Well, it’s cooked. Do you know how kyselachka is cooked? Well, I’ll explain it in Czech, so write it down. You beat the butter, there’s this kind of churn, now they do everything electrically, but in the past we beat the butter in a churn like this. You beat the butter, pour it out, you scoop the butter out, and you pour buttermilk from the churn. You cook potatoes, boil them a bit in water, and the buttermilk is done a bit... sour. You cook the potatoes, buttermilk, and then you make dough with bits like this, and you cut it up into leaf-shapes - like this, throw the dumplings in, and the cream, when it’s skimmed, we even had manual separators... you skim the cream, mix it up, an egg and the potato broth, you pour it in, pour it in, and it’s kind of - a soup, when it’s cold, it’s... what is now called okroshka, and the Czechs here called it kyselachka [sour soup]. Kyselachka, soup.”

“Czechs stripped feathers, everything that came in the summer, so they wouldn’t lose them, the geese, their feathers, they plucked them and put them in duvets, you know... And then in December when it was, before the new year, we got together in a group, that was Mum, I came, Grandma too... one... to the first we came to strip feathers, we’d strip the feathers - then we came to the next, and Grandma kept telling us stories - oh, what stories they were, terrible... and what work I had with the sheep, cold it was, nothing proper to wear, and so... we came - we’re nodding, nodding, well... children, children, running all the time... and the boys caught some live sparrows and let them loose in the cottage, and the feathers blew all over... that’s how cheeky they were... But could you hold it against them? No! And boys... my hubby was also Czech, he...”