White bread is like cake – doesn’t fill you up! (Smuidrīte Jinkinson)

Excerpt from an interview with Smudirīte Jinkinson in the United Kingdom in 2016, when the museum visited her during a field expedition:

And then, when we arrived in Corby, somehow – I don’t know how – they [my parents] found out that rye flour could be ordered from Scotland. So they ordered flour from Scotland, and then my mother baked bread almost every week. Because really, as she used to say, white bread is like cake – it doesn’t fill you up. You eat a slice of rye bread and right away you feel that you’ve actually eaten. The flour came by post! … I remember when I was in grammar school – [my friends] were Penny and Marina … and I don’t know how we had decided that we wouldn’t stay at school for lunch. I know my mother had baked bread, and we went to my house, because it wasn’t very far from the school. And we had a really good lunch at my place with this rye bread. They liked it so terribly much!

It smells of braised sauerkraut! (Juris Sinka)

Juris Sinka arrived in the United Kingdom in 1950, where he studied at the University of Oxford. In his diary entry of December 20, 1950, Juris describes how the smell of cabbage filled the recently purchased Daugavas Vanagi house in Queensborough Terrace:
‘I am truly very glad that this house now belongs to Latvians. At the moment it smells of braised sauerkraut! It’s a pity I didn’t talk to the landlady—maybe she would have given me a portion. There isn’t any real catering set up yet. They have only been here for two weeks.’

My family pīrāgi recipe – with commentary (Aivars Sinka)

Aivars Sinka: “Quite often my English acquaintances wanted to try baking pīrāgi, so I wrote the recipe in English. I used to bake a lot. It felt important to me that my daughters understood that Latvian food is different from English food. I often put a pīrāgs in their school lunchbox.

I bake my pīrāgi using the same recipe my mother used and, very likely, the one her mother used as well.”

Ēriks and Aina on mushroom picking

They wanted to arrest me and Aina. We went to the forest to pick mushrooms, and they wanted to arrest us. Apparently, we were trying to poison someone!
The police arrived. The English people who walk there saw us picking mushrooms and had reported us to the police.

When we bought that other house — the bungalow — it was near the forest. During the day, my friend’s dog and I would go for walks after work and pick mushrooms. Sometimes Erik and the children came along too. And then — ‘What are you doing? Picking mushrooms? They’re poisonous!’
I said, ‘If they were poisoned, I’d have been dead long ago

Madara Riley – Mushroom Maddie

On Facebook, you can find Madara Riley, a Latvian living in the United Kingdom, who is very passionate about mushroom picking. She shares her stories, experiences, knowledge, and inspires others.

DVF mobile corner store

The Daugavas Vanagi Fund’s traveling store in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1968. In front stands the store manager, Arturs Vancāns. From the collection of the Documentation Centre and Archive of Latvians in Great Britain.