Food and restaurants
The first meal of the day is breakfast. Some people recommend a substantial breakfast, others prefer a light, healthy one, one that is easily digestible. A typical breakfast menu includes bread, rolls or croissants, butter, ham, salami, cheese, marmelade and honey. Another alternative is to have scrambled eggs, omelettes or pudding. Those who prefer a more healthy diet will eat yoghurt, cereals with milk, porridge or fresh fruit. Popular drinks include tea, coffee, cocoa or fruit juice.
At around ten a.m. it´s tome for a little snack. It´s good to have something small, easily digestible, such as fruits, vegetables or yoghurt.
The main meal of the day is lunch – comes between noon and 1 p.m. Most people have lunch in school or company cafeterias or in restaurants. Lunch consist of a starter, main course and most people like to round off their meals with something sweet. Starters may include soups, the main course normally consists of cooked meat, fish or poultry with side dishes like potatoes or rice. The dessert menu includes a piece of cake, ice cream, pudding, fruits or salads. Finally, there is something nice to drink like mineral water, juice, coffee or a glass of beer.
At about four o´clock there should be another snack and people often have the same things as they had in the morning.
The last meal of the day is dinner which comes between six and seven o´clock. In most families, something warm is eaten, such as dumplings with sauce, pancakes or sausage with mustard.
During the day, it´s necessary to drink enough liquids. The recommended daily consumption is around two litres.
When having guests or celebrating people find it more comfortable to go to a restaurant. The menu allows us to order an appetizer, hors-d´oeuvre, soup, main course, side dishes, dessert and drinks. After the meal, guests ask the waiter to produce the bill. People either share the bill or go Dutch. Normally, gentleman pay for the lady, but it´s not a duty. It´s, however, usual to tip the waiter by saying: You can keep the change. There are various types of restaurants: inns, fastfood restaurants, cafeterias, bistros, snack bars or take-away restaurants. As far as drinks are concerned, bars, wine bars, beer houses or cafés are very popular.
The British usually start work and school later in the morning than we do so they have a lot of time to enjoy their morning meal. A traditional English breakfast is quite big. It consists of porridge with a topping of a maple syrup, a dish of fried bacon and eggs, fried sausages and tomatoes or ham and eggs, buttered toast and marmelade. They usually have a cup of tea with milk or coffee and a glass of orange juice. English lunch is much smaller than the Czech one. It´s usually just a quick sandwich. A typical Sunday lunch is much more similar to ours, it can be a steak or roast lamb etc. For dinner is really popular minipizza and French fries, fish sticks, pasta, soaps and various other ready-made dishes.
Czechs, in general, like fatty meals with lard and flour. Our typical dish is roast pork, sauerkraut and dumplings, gulas with dumplings or roast sirloin of beef in cream sauce again with dumpling. The typical Czech soup is tripe soup. Our traditional dishes are certainly attractive to foreign visitors and everyone should have the opportunity to taste them.
I´m not a very good cook but I have to help my mum sometimes. I can prepare a few recipes like pasta with cheese sauce or roast chicken and rice. These are easy but you spend a lot of time in the kitchen and at the end you don´t enjoy the meal as much.
My favourite meal is……