Kruh i mast

It is a collection of modern Croatian stories. It brings back granny's recipies to our kitchen drawers. By the power of the author's description and strength of insight of what it deals with the book opens our larders and fridges.
The content of the book can be divided into subtitles according to the types of food it speaks about: Vegetables, Meat, Pastry and Fruit.
I have chosen the story dealing with an old and simple food Bread and Fat (Kruh i mast) and that is the title of the whole collection. The writer describes the importance and symbolism of that food. He remembers his how his father could it in enormous quantities «up to heaven», and yet it was left for him too. They eat bred and fat at any time; as a starter, between meals, as a lunch, as the main course, even for desert, because bread and fat were ideal combination. He supposes that it is so because the ingredients of these two materials are completely independent from each other.
Bread can go without fat, and fat can go without bread. Bread is eaten every day almost in every meal. Some people even eat it with soup. Bread is by itself a sort of food, which is so simple, and again complicated.
Fat is an ingredient of almost every food. We can eat it with maize-mash, with gruel, with salt cookies and a lot of other food.
Bread as well as fat has its own identity, yet both of them are omnipresent.
Long time ago, in time, which the writer speaks about, people were aware of the importance of bread and fat, and of the importance of their combination. That's why they kept them on special place and preserved them in special ways. Considering all this it is no wonder that this food has never gained one name, but it has always kept both parts of the combination; BREAD & FAT.
A piece of bread covered with fat contains a lot of things; it contains the whole history of one tradition. This simple food contains in some wonderful way something that is nourishing and saturated, the poverty and wealth, something a man can't live without and something, which makes life nicer.
The last and maybe the most important writer's expression is; «Bread is the basis, and fat is building up, bread is property and fat is abundance, bread is life and fat is health».
 

Zelika Haramina 3AT