October 19, 2012

Bohemian food love story - a Trip to Prague #1

This summer I went on a trip to the Czech capital Prague with a friend of mine. This post will be the start of a series about Prague.

When we went to Prague we of course wanted to taste authentic Czech food. When I was a child I grew up in a region near to the Czech Republic but I didn't realize that I ate a lot of czech & czech-influenced food when I was young. So the trip to Prague was like a food dreamland of my childhood. I remembered all my favourite dishes I used to eat as a child.

One of the most famous dish of Czech is goulash with dumpling. There are so many variations of this dish. The most famous one abroad is beef goulash with sliced bohemian bread dumpling. But you can also find goulash with pork or sometimes turkey breast with a light gravy.

Germans love to eat potatoes & Czech love to eat dumplings.
As you may know there are many, many sorts of dumplings. Some of them are bread dumplings, bacon dumplings, semolina dumplings, potatoe dumplings, ... And there are also sweet ones, like yeast dumplings filled with plums, apricots or blueberries - my favourite ones.

But Czech cuisine has much more to offer than goulash & dumplings. There are also many delicious deserts & healthy & light summer dishes. I think I'll introduce some oft them soon.

But let's talk about where to eat best in Prague.
When we were on our way to Prague Castle we discovered this small, very cute panncake-shop. (Can you say it like this in English?) It is called 'Creperie u Katjetána'. The pancakes we ate there were really good, althought in my opinion they were rather french crèpe than czech palačinka - czech pancakes. You also have to taste the home made limonade. This limonade ist not too sweet but really refreshing & the best decision on a hot summer afternoon.  In the back of this shop you can find a very lovely summer garden. Everything was furnished very lovingly & the waitress was very nice too. We didn't feel like we were in a typically tourists restaurant. It was really comfortable there & we stayed some time just to relax & to enjoy the wonderful summer day. I really advise you to go there when you're vistiting Prague. You can find the Creperie on the street called Nerudova - between the Curch St. Nicholas & the Prague Castle.

summer garden
pancake shop
pancake withe banana & nuts (left)
pancake with cinnamon & sugar (right)

The 'U Dvóu Sester' is a restaurant that offers delicious & authentic Czech dishes. You can also have the good tasting Czech beer there. Because I can't stand eating goulash the entire 3 days we spent in Prague I had a fried potatoe patty with sauerkraut seasoned with caraway & Czech sausage. You should know that Czech sausages usually contain pieces of fat. Either you're used to it or you won't really like it. My friend had the typically Czech goulash with sliced bohemian dumplings as mentioned above. It was really tasty. Somehow I was a bit jealous on this goulash. I should had taken that, too. This restaurant is situated very close to the Old Town Square. The street is called Melantrichova. You can find it easily on google. If you want to eat real authentic Czech dishes you should go there.

I'm sorry for the poor quality of these pictures.
Goulash with sliced bread dumpings
Fried potatoe patty - not very notable, but very delicious


And this is how you can find both restaurants:
Way to 'Creperie u Katjetána'
Way to 'U Dvóu Sester'

In the end you should know that it is not easy to find real authentic Czech restaurants in Prague. You should consider that most of the restaurants just offer some variations of goulash with dumplings, because most tourist want to eat this dish but don't have any sense what authentic Czech food is. I really wanted to eat yeast dumplings filled with blueberries, but no restaurant offered them. Nor did any of them offer authentic Czech desserts. To taste real authentic Czech dish you have to leave the main attractions & go to regions or cities with less tourists. I advice going to Czech hiking areas for the nature is breath taking & the hiking trails are very interesting.









Here are some pictures of the delicious Czech food we ate during our trip. Everything tasted so good.
palačinka  filled with mascarpone & vanilla ice cream

apple strudel & cinnamon ice cream
bacon dumplings & goulash

Pasta

non-alcoholic cocktail with mint, lime & brown sugar

turkey breast filled with spinach

goulash soup in a loaf of bread

small pancakes in blueberry sauce

palačinka with fruits
I hope you'll like Czech food as I do ;-)

October 14, 2012

The Truth Alone Prevails - Video Link

A few days ago I wrote a post about the Indian TV-show Satyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Prevails).

A few minutes ago I watched the first episode of this show & it was very touching. The topic of this episode was female foeticide. Female Foeticide is the term for the act of aborting a foetus because it is female. This is one of the main challenges in India. Now you may think that this is just a problem that is connected with illiterate or uneducated people. But surprisingly it is mostly a problem in middle class & high educated families for they strongly are wishing for a male son and heir of the family.

Aamir Khan is not only talking to people, but he also gives some information on his topics, like statistics, causation & aftermath. You must consider that in India there are many low educated people, who can learn important things from this show. For example Aamir Khan explains that mostly woman are accused for the  pregnancy with a female baby, but actually it is the male's sperm that affects the sex of the child. I didn't know that until then. 

You can watch the entire episodes on the website of the show. The show's primary language is Hindi, but you can select the English subtitle. In my opinion it was a bit tiring to read subtitle for an hour but maybe that's because English is not my mother tounge.

Now here is the link. I hope you enjoy watching the show. Please leave a comment with your opinion about this show. 

October 12, 2012

The Truth Alone Prevails

Satyamev Jayate - Truth Alone Prevails
Today I'd like to write about a special TV-show I saw about on CNN this evening. I ususally don't watch CNN but when I saw that the topic was about Bollywood I watched the current show called Amanpour.

But actually it was not about Bollywood. The topic of the show was the Indian TV show 'Satyamev Jayate' (Truth Alone Prevails) which is hosted by the Bollywood actor and filmmaker Aamir Khan. In his show Aamir Khan talks about issues & problems which are not spoken about a lot in India althought they are omnipresent. 

Many people don't like to talk about sensitive social issues like abortion of female foetuses, child sexual abuse, dowry - put great financial strain to the brides family, medical malpractice, honor killings, pesticide poisoning, alcoholism, untouchability - excluding a social group from the mainstream, plight of senior citizens and water crisis. So for the makers of the show it is hard to find people who talk about these issues on the show & what happened to them. 
CNN showed a short film where a woman talked about that she was pregnant & when she or rather her doctor found out that she was pregnant with a female baby it got aborted without the woman knowing about this. She also said that this happened to her 6 times in the last 8 years.

Satyamev Jayate premiered on 6th May 2012, so the topics spoken about are current issues. I think this show is really touching & you may learn a lot about social problems in India & how the Indian society handles them. I think I'm going to watch it on the internet. Because I just learned about this show I didn't search for a video link yet. But if you are interested in this show too, I could post a video link, when I found one.

I hope you'll like this show & keep curious!

October 3, 2012

You wanna play a little game ...?



Just kidding ^^
In fact I just got tagged by my dear friend Shou. That means you are invited to take part in one of these funny blog/internet games.

And that's how it goes:

1. Note the person who tagged you and link him/her.
2. Write 8 facts about yourself which suit to the topic the "tagger" chose.
3. Tag 10 other people.
4. Inform the people who you tagged.
5. Chose an own topic for those tagged people.

The topic she chose is "shopping" O.o

Mhmmmm .... let's see ...

1.) I hate ...
Shopping if I really need something. I never find anything that I like or that fits me well.

2.) It's not always easy to be a pear ...
There are two kinds of woman bodies - apples & pears. Women with an apple-like one tend to gain fat at the  belly. In contrast pear-like bodies tend to have thick tights & a bigger bottom. Sometimes it's really hard to find something that covers my tights, especially when the current trend tends to shorter shirts.

3.) When I fall in love ...
When I find something that I really like & which fits me so well then I have to buy it. The only thing that can prevent me is a high price. That's why I usually don't try expensive clothes on ^^

4.) It's not all about shopping clothes ...
I usually don't like shopping clothes, because 99% of them I either don't think they are pretty or I look some kind of ugly with them.

5.) I want to buy ALL THE BOOKS!!
I could hang out in a book store all day long. Just go along the book shelfes, reading the titles of the book & now and then flip one book open to read a few lines. Aahhh, just love it. Some day I'd like to own a huge bookshelf as tall as the roof with so many books.

bookshelf of my dreams

6.) You can have a lot of fun without intending to buy anything ...
From a furniture shop. I like going to furniture shops just for fun. You can have a lot of fun there, especially in the armchair section.

7.) I don't like ...
Shops with no people in it. Maybe it's because I'm shy or something but I feel very uncomfortable when I walk in an empty shop & the vender is watching me all the time.

8.) If I had a lot of money ...
I wouldn't spend it on shopping. I would save most of it & when the time has come I'll travel around the world & visit fantastic places.

I made it! 8 facts about shopping. Not one of my favourite topics, but it was fun :-)

Now I need 10 people to tag ...
So I choose ...
1. Natalija
2. Prairie Rose
3. Yvonne
4. Tino
5. Florian
6. coolio
7. Anji der Frosch
8. Sandra
9. A traveling fish
10. Jenny

So the topic I choose is "The wonderful things in life".

What are the most wonderful things in your life? What makes you happy? Or what makes you smile when you are in a bad mood?

I'm looking forward to read your posts about this topic.