Daily Meals

Daily meals usually start with breakfast. An English breakfast is different from ours. A traditional British breakfast consists of a glass of fruit juice, cornflakes with sugar and milk, and toast with marmalade or jam or honey. Quite a lot of British people eat müsli for their breakfast or some other ready-made cereals or porridge. In the morning they usually drink tea or coffee.

The second meal is lunch which is taken between 12 and 1 o‘clock. People usually have their lunch in the factory or in the school canteen or in a restaurant. It consists of some soup, a main dish, something to drink, and a salad or dessert.

Soups are either vegetable soups (potato, tomato, pea, bean, carrot, parsley, celery, or mushroom) or meat broths (beef broth, tripe, chicken or goulash soup, etc.). Some people cook fruit soups (e.g. strawberry soup).

The main dish can be either sweet - e.g. strawberry or plum dumplings, pancakes with jam and cream, baked yeast dumplings, doughnuts, etc. - or we can have some meat or fish or poultry with some vegetables such as potatoes, chips, rice, Czech dumplings, pasta, or bread. We distinguish the following types of meat: beef, pork, veal, mutton, lamb, and game and we can prepare it in various ways - roast it, grill it, boil it, bake it, or stew it. Poultry means things like chicken, hen, duck, turkey, or goose. The fish most often cooked in our country is carp (it s a traditional Christmas meal - breaded carp and potato salad).

Typical Czech meals include: tripe soup, potato soup, "kulajda" soup, roast goose with sauerkraut and Czech dumplings, Moravian sparrows with dumplings, Spanish birds, potato pancakes, fruit dumplings with cream, baked yeast dumplings, fried cheese, etc. Traditional Czech cuisine is a bit unhealthy, however, and people can get fat. Many families prefer to cook more vegetable meals. They become vegetarians or they try some kind of foreign foods.

After the main dish we may drink tea, lemonade, cider, juice, Coca-Cola, mineral water, or syrup and water, while the adults like beer and black coffee after their dinner. While cooking we may add various spices so that the meal will have a unique flavor – for example garlic, sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, curry, pepper, ginger, red pepper, mace, cinnamon, clove, cumin, bay leaf, allspice, ketchup, Soya sauce, Worchester, sugar, vinegar, mustard, peanuts, onions, flour, etc.

An evening meal may be either warm or cold. Cold and quick suppers may consist of some paté on bread or rolls, kippers, or some spread. We can cook a ready-made dish from a tin or have soup or potato pancakes.

Fast food is a typical feature of both British and American lifestyles. The Americans call fast food restaurants "cheapies". These places - McDonald s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken (in America also Mrs. Winner’s) - usually offer beverages (Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, tea, coffee, milkshakes...), some solid food like roast chicken and chips, hamburgers, sandwiches, pizza, salads, or deserts. The oldest types of fast food are seafood stalls or shops - usually fish and chips. Another typical feature of the British and American lifestyle is popcorn. You can buy it when you are walking the streets.