Chumak-Style Millet

Before the time of the railroad in Ukraine, the carters or chumak merchants carried on a trade in dried fish and mined salt. These carters made slow and arduous journeys in ox-drawn caravans across the sparsely populated vast steppes of southern Ukraine to the port cities in Crimea. Carters are frequently mentioned in stories and legends and it is said that while stopping to rest their oxen, they prepared meals of millet kasha in iron kettles over open fires—and so the dish bears the