Jokelien Boonstra of the De Sociëteit meeting center in Alkmaar has been cooking up a lot lately. She has made more than eighty portions of borshch, all proceeds go to victims of the war in Ukraine. “We hope to raise more than a thousand euros,” she tells NH Nieuws.
The idea for the soup campaign came about two weeks ago when she visited her daughter and grandchildren in Georgia. That country was already involved in a war with Russia in 2008. “The war in Ukraine is very much alive in Georgia. When we went to a restaurant there, I saw an action ‘make borshch not War’. Then I thought: we can do that here too.”
And so Jokelien got to work. In a Georgian cookbook she found the recipe for the beetroot soup that is on the menu in many Slavic countries. “I tried it once and everyone liked it, so I got to work.”
mother soup
According to Jokelien, the campaign fits very well with the De Sociëteit meeting center. “Eating soup together connects. Borshch also fits well with that, because the dish is also called the ‘mother soup’. It is eaten in many Eastern European countries and when you are in Georgia you notice that they are not against the Russians there. are against the warlike leader.”
The soup is for sale until Friday for five euros at the meeting center De Sociëteit and community center De Eenhoorn in Alkmaar. And that the borscht is to the taste, can be seen in the video below.