Lithuania

Allan loves orchestral music. One of our favorite things is when Linda brings her record player, Heidi brings poetry, and I make vegetarian food from a selected country. A few weeks ago, Heidi, Linda, and I pored through a Baltic cookbook by Simon Bajada from the Los Angeles County Library and selected Lithuanian recipes – an appetizer of cucumber and honey, a first course of roast carrot soup with gouda, topped with organic carrot greens, more gouda, sour cream, and rye crumble and a second course of potato pudding with apple butter, sour cream, and salted cucumber salad. Dessert was a vanilla and apricot Napoleonas torte that I ordered from Lithuanian Bakery, Inc through Goldbelly.com. I thought the carrot soup stole the show and the dessert was so rich and delicious! I didn't find these exact Lithuanian recipes online, but there are plenty more to try here https://www.yummly.com/recipes/lithuanian. If you want to make one of those complicated Lithuanian desserts, here is a Spiced Honey Cake that will take hours to make and a couple of days for the flavors to meld! https://www.ugnebakes.com/lithuanian-honey-cake/

After dinner, Heidi reported on the Lithuanian poet Maironis and we read his poetry out loud from this site: https://allpoetry.com/Maironis. Linda set up her record player and we listened to the Lithuanian Rhapsody by Mieczysław Karłowicz which can also be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJKhuwq-xsM. It was such a pleasant evening. Thank you to Heidi and Linda for engaging Allan’s love of music!

This wasn’t my first experience with Lithuania. Last March, I listened to a story of an orphan girl who moves to Lithuania to live with grandfather, The River Nemunas from the collection Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr. To this I recently added The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The Jungle is one of those books that I heard about in English classes but hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. (I have read so many things during the pandemic that I had always intended to read, but hadn’t gotten around to yet.) The Jungle is most famous for inspiring meat standards in the United States, but the reason it is relevant here is that it is a story of Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago. I found both books on CD from the San Bernardino County Library and The Jungle can be found on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/140

Besides cooking, music, and reading, to experience Lithuania in California, there is a Little Lithuania in Los Angeles in the community around St. Casimir Lithuanian Church. Within the United States, the largest Lithuanian community is in Chicago, and I was lucky enough to spend time there in 2019 during a work trip. I visited the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture where I saw exhibits on amber, the currency of ancient Lithuania, as well as on medieval battles and kings, gaining independence from Russia’s tsar, fleeing Stalin, and Lithuanians in America for the last hundred years. I barely had time for appetizers at Grand Duke's Restaurant before my flight home, so I had the fried bread and warm cheese, crepes with caviar, and mamaliga (polenta with vegetables on top). If I hadn’t needed to rush to the airport, I would have had the trout or one of the many other amazing looking options: https://www.granddukesrestaurant.com/restaurant-menu

Once upon a time, Lithuania and Poland were combined under one ruler who was both the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Shortly after the countries were partitioned, Adam Mickiewicz wrote the epic poem Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania. It can be found on Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28240 and the movie is on Kanopy.

What else have I enjoyed as I travel to Lithuania while staying at home?

· Art by Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis: https://www.wikiart.org/en/mikalojus-ciurlionis

· Poetry by Salomeja Neris: https://allpoetry.com/Salomeja-Neris

· Lithuanian folk dance – so fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEbNUDaFRGA

· The comedy of the Lithuanian rewrite of the Spanish song Despacito as performed in Lithuania’s capital city Vilnius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_l0uoANOaA

· A Great Courses lecture on Baltic Partisan Warfare (Episode 15 of A History of Eastern Europe on Kanopy)

· The Chuck's World episode on cooking in Lithuania: https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/614555/s01-e107-lithuania?start=true

Some great places to visit in Lithuania are here https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-lithuania/#more-16280 and yes, I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Lithuania and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Paulius Andriekus https://unsplash.com/photos/IFc8Of_jnf0