Recent Stories
Pashka in the shape of a hedgehog (Māra Siksna)
In Māra’s family, a special tradition of making pasha has developed for Easter. Each year Māra prepares uncooked pasha, while her daughter chooses to make the cooked version.
Flower pot pashka (Laima Grāmatiņa)
Living in America, Mirdza Grāmatiņa began making paskha at Easter using a recipe she found in a magazine. Mirdza’s daughter Laima adopted this tradition, and every Easter Laima tries...
“Buberts” from grandmother’s wartime refugee cookbook (Andris Valdmanis)
Andris prepared buberts together with his four-year-old son Māris, using a recipe from his grandmother’s wartime-refugee cookbook, so there would be something tasty ready when little brother Lauris woke...
Our house smells like Latvia (Līga Druka-Smalka)
Līga is from Latvia. Before moving to the United Kingdom, she lived in Aizkraukle, a town that is still her second home. Now she lives in Wales, in Cardiff,...
Pancake breakfast in Boston (Gints Grinbergs un Armands Ramoliņš)
For about 30 years, the Latvian community in Boston has had a special Family Day tradition: making pancakes. However, this tradition has a small twist compared to usual—only the...
Pascha mold from the Lauri colony (Nata Meģe)
Laura Latvian descendant Nata Meģe shares her family’s pasha recipe and the wooden mold used to make pasha, which has been passed down in her family from generation to...
“Debesmanna” in vanilla sauce (Silvija Gurtiņš Mežgailis)
Silvija says that her mother and mother-in-law used to make debessmanna in the traditional way — first boiling the berries, then pressing them through a sieve to obtain a...
Childhood “buberts” (Signe Miķelsone)
Signe has been living outside Latvia for 17 years. Although she enjoys foods from other cultures and rarely eats desserts, she sometimes still feels the urge to prepare buberts—a...
Whisk until it is fluffy and airy (Maruta Bergs)
While living in Latvia, Maruta remembers how her mother and grandmother prepared a variety of sweet dishes during her childhood. After moving to America, she had to relearn everything...
70-year-old wooden molds (Aija Ērgle)
Aija’s mother always made paskha for Easter, using wooden molds that her husband had made about 70 years ago. Today, Aija continues this family tradition by preparing paskha according...
“Ķīselis” in interview excerpts from Latvians in Bashkortostan
''Ķīselis" in interview excerpts from Latvians in Bashkortostan. Interviews took place during a museum expedition in 2009.
In 20 minutes and without a recipe – “The Truly Latvian Easter Paska Competition”
The ‘Truly Latvian Easter Paska Competition,’ led by Māra Gulēna and Elizabete Ludvika, was held at the Toronto Latvian Seniors Association (TLPA) gathering on April 17, 2025.
Latvian sweet soup in Brazil
In 2009, the museum went on an expedition to Brazil. During the expedition, a multicultural food market in the city of Americana was also visited, where local Brazilian Latvians...
Let’s do it the way we do it in this century, in this era (Inese Grava-Gubiņa)
Fragments from an interview with Inese Grava-Gubiņa, July 13, 2025.
Give us today our daily bread (Rūdolfs and Irma Grava)
The Liepāja handicrafts teacher Rudolfs Fridrihs Grava made this bread platter in 1929 as a wedding anniversary gift for his wife, Irma Grava (née Mindenbergs). Irma and Rudolfs took...
Whenever my mother baked bread, the entire house smelled wonderful (Mārīte Krūze)
Mārite Krūze (USA) tells the story of her mother, Valentīne Upats (née Macāns, born in Rēzekne in 1924), and her bread baking. My mother, Valentīne Upats, recalled how she began...
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...
“Lett’s Bake” sourdough
The Latvians Abroad museum met Mareks Nēgels in 2015 at the Toronto Latvian centre - he was baking "Lett's Bake" sourdough.
A bread oven built from an anthill (Edith Siemel)
Aleksandrs Ziemeļs’s wife, Edīte (Edith Louise Bray Siemel), stands by a bread oven built from an anthill.
Where do you find bolted flour in Philadelphia? (Inta Grunde and Valdis Bašēns)
Excerpt from an interview with Inta Grunde and Valdis Bašēns in Philadelphia, USA, in 2015, when the museum met them during a field expedition: Inta: My mother always looked for...
Bread treasured as a symbol of home (Vilhelms Griķis)
Vilhelms Griķis’ butter container, in which he kept symbols of home, taken from Latvia during the refugee journeys of the Second World War: rye bread, ears of grain, and...
A master baker from Latvia (Kārlis Atars)
Documents of master baker Kārlis Atars from the collection of the museum “Latvians Abroad". Before the Second World War, Kārlis owned a bakery on Avotu Street in Riga. After the...