Cooking for a cause: Five Ukrainian women make homemade meals for armed forces

Five residents in the city of Baranivka are preparing and packaging homemade meals for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. 

The food is packed in 3 and 5-liter buckets and delivered to the military through volunteers. Setting their own record, these women cooked 130 buckets of different dishes in one day, Rubryka reports, citing Suspilne.

One of the cooks, Natalia Hrytsai, has been helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the early days of the full-scale invasion. She cooks homemade food and volunteers to deliver it to the front line. Initially, she cooked for the local, territorial defense, but then she read online that the volunteer workshop needed assistance.

"I read online that the 'Warm Defender Workshop' needed help. I told the girls, my friends, 'Let's go. We'll see.' So when we arrived, the girls were making nets there. But there was no kitchen; they made dry rations, energy bars," says Natalia.

Now Natalia Hrytsai cooks in her own kitchen. Volunteers and fellow villagers bring ingredients for the dishes. Halyna Oliinyk assists Natalia. She couldn't stay on the sidelines because her son and husband also defended Ukraine.

"The guys are waiting. Waiting for our volunteers with food. They are waiting for that warmth. We do all this: we cook so that they feel it's homemade. They know and understand that no one forgot about them, and someone cares for them," says Halyna.

The menu is diverse: pancakes, patties, cutlets, and cookies. According to Natalia Hrytsai, the largest amount of food they prepared at once was 130 buckets. It's easier in winter because food doesn't spoil as quickly.

"Now it's winter, so it doesn't spoil. In summer, when they were delivering, we had our own way of [preparing food], and everything reached them. It's a big secret, can't say. Everything [we cook] arrives at the destination — volunteers deliver, and the guys report that everything is there. And it gets prepared on the last day. We don't do it like this in summer. Now it's winter, so we cook for three days because we need to prepare everything, peel everything," says Natalia.

Volunteers report back to the women, and the defenders send thanks through messengers.

"When we baked Easter cakes last year, they also reported that they received these Easter bread. They cry, and we cry. It's nice that our volunteers deliver it, and our warriors are not hungry. I always say, 'Girls, after the Victory, all the bachelors will return. We'll marry them and bake a wedding cake for them,'" says the volunteer.

Earlier, Rubryka reported on volunteers from Zhytomyr who prepared and sent a ton of salad to the front.