Notes and Recording from the June 17 meeting
Guest speaker: Felicity Spector
We had a wonderful call this morning for the Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific group. It was extra special as this was the first call for this group that featured a special guest speaker. And what a fabulous guest we had: Felicity Spector, who is the author of the book Bread and War, a journalist with over 30 years of experience and a Substack writer who writes Flour Power: by Felicity Spector.
Felicity talked to us about how she keeps sane and positive in the context of writing about a war zone, about how she went about writing her book (she also wrote about this in a post here), her admiration for Ukrainian people’s ability to withstand the hardship and their dislike for the word resilience. We talked about some of this after ending the recording part, but basically the conclusion was that Ukrainians are just like the rest of us and the risk of calling people who keep fighting in the context of dire circumstances — may it be war or chronic/terminal illness — resilient, is that we feel like it gets us off the hook. By saying things like you are so resilient, you are so strong, are we being selfish, since it means we don’t need to make space for them to share their pain and struggle with us.
Felicity also shared her love for Ukrainian food (and sirniki in particular, that get lots of great publicity on her Instagram account) and told us she could never be a recipe writer, what with all the shopping for ingredients and testing the dishes. She recommended a cook book Cuisines of Odessa by Maria Kalenska, for which she wrote a foreword.
She also recommended a Ukrainian food writer Olia Hercules and another Ukrainian Substacker Victoria Belim.
You can support Felicity by becoming a paid subscriber to her Substack here:
Her Substack income supports the charity Bake for Ukraine, which you can donate to directly as well, using this link: https://bakeforukraine.org/
You can order her book Bread and War here if you are in the US, here if you are in the UK and here is you are Europe.
And you can watch the recording — where you may hear some things I forgot to mention in this post — here:
Passcode: !Q?0ecw9
Thank you, Felicity Spector for starting our ‘guest speaker’ series in such a spectacular way.
I hope many of you will watch the recording, subscribe to Felicity, buy her book and be inspired to support the bakers of Ukraine.
About your meeting hosts
Liza Debevec is a social anthropologist, African studies specialist, and career/life coach. She writes two Substack publications that bring together her love of stories, food, languages, and personal growth. Originally from Slovenia, Liza now lives in Lisbon, Portugal, after many years in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and other corners of the world. Her work is inspired by the ways people connect through meals, words, and meaningful conversations.
Rebecca Blackwell is a writer, recipe developer and food photographer who publishes two recipe websites and a Substack newsletter. She and her husband are nomads without a home base but with many modes of transportation, namely an RV, a motorcycle, and a sailboat. Rebecca writes recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure.