Slovak Food

One of the things everyone is curious about is Slovak food, so I will tell you all about it! Overall the food is very good and not tremendously different than food I am used to. There are a lot of potatoes and meat, and the meat is usually beef or pork- very rarely chicken. Marcelka told me that potatoes have always been very popular, because they are cheap. When the country was really poor potatoes were the cheapest and easiest thing to eat, so potatoes were the main food. Now it’s mostly just a traditional food.
Breakfast usually consists of cereals, breads, yogurt, vegetables (like peppers and tomatoes), cheese, and sometimes salami and ham. Usually I stick to the yogurt and breads though. The bread here is absolutely amazing! There are so many different kinds and it is all so fresh- I love it. Lunch is the biggest meal, and it always consists of some type of soup and then a main course. The soups are pretty good- a lot of different kinds, usually with meat, potatoes, and onions. The main course is sometimes rice, or potatoes, and then a meat, usually beef. The national food is called halušky and it is like potato noodles- it’s hard to explain, because it looks like pasta, but isn’t pasta. It’s potatoes mixed with flour and something else, usually topped with goat cheese and bacon. It’s pretty good, but very filling and heavy. The bacon is really different here though, because it is sold in a block and they leave all the fat in it. They actually prefer to eat the bacon fat and that grosses me out a little bit. I try to steer clear of that. The other thing I am not crazy about is cabbage and that is really popular here also. Sometimes at lunch they have what is called a "sweet lunch", and this is great. It’s so strange to me, because it is like dessert, but they eat it for lunch! It is dumplings filled with fruit usually (apples, berries, jam, or poppy seeds) and then topped with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. It is very, very good, but it is so strange to think of it as lunch.
Dinner is usually a small meal. Sometimes just some bread with butter, or bread with some cheese, peppers, and tomatoes. I never ate peppers before, but now I eat peppers all the time, and I realized that they are pretty good. Once we had pudding for dinner, and that was different for me too. It’s different having lunch being the biggest meal, and dinner being small, but I think it is healthier to eat more in the middle of the day, and I have gotten used to that now. The main drinks are tea and coffee- lots and lots of tea. Usually there is just hot tea with all the meals. But one of the unique beverages here is called kofula, and it is like soda, but with some added flavoring. It almost has a lemon and licorice taste to it. I don’t like it very much, but a lot of people do.
Hopefully that gives you an idea about the food here and I will try to post more about what is going on sometime soon!