A Family Comfort Food

In all honesty, the spelling of the dish that I decided to make is unknown. But the “roljtyas” that I decided to make have been enjoyed by my family for so long that worrying about their spelling feels trivial.

I remember my grandpa telling stories about his life in the Ukraine before World War II, how he once carved his own pair of skis from the neighbor’s fence posts or how he ended up on a boat to Canada instead of Argentina, as he had planned, and he always told stories about the farm he worked on. My grandfather had grown up poor, and on a farm where food was abundant, he often tried to sneak food out and take it back home.

After being caught several times, my great grandmother, frustrated with her son always being in trouble, sewed pockets into his pants that ran all the way down the leg. This was not exactly the kind of punishment one would expect, to aid and encourage a lousy thief, but he was helping the family. As a treat for my grandpa and his siblings, some of the fruits that he brought home would go into roljtyas, their favorite dessert.

Roljtyas were a way for my grandfather to remember his family and home, and for my father, it was a way to remember my grandfather after he had died. While cooking the roljtyas, I was taken back to my childhood memories of Canada: back to when my grandfather and I would sit on the back porch snacking on the raspberry bush and sour cherries, waiting for the roljtyas to finish baking.