Rehovot

In the spirit of foodblog adventure, I picked up some chicken-flavored potato chips at the market, to have with lunch. These are stacked right next to the ham-flavored chips. (No doubt these are cousins of the ham-flavored popcorn you can get at the movies, here, but that's another story.) The chicken-flavored chips were remarkably...good. And sort of herby. I strolled down the pernik (gingerbread) aisle in search of something to have after lunch. A whole aisle, you say? Yes... These small bricks of chocolate-covered gingerbread come in dozens of varieties--with strawberry, apricot, coconut, cherry, and plum filling, to name a few. I picked plum. And it's not bad at all with a cup of coffee. There's a shot (to be posted later ) of a Colombian-chocolate and cappuccino Magnum ice cream bar, and I really had to put it down and back away slowly to avoid shrieking with joy in the frozen-foods aisle. My husband and I became addicted to these ice cream bars in Israel, but I haven't seen the chocolate-cappuccino one before. Nakji, I'll get a shot of the cheese at home... I've never seen anyone eat it out, but we eat it just like string cheese.

Hi, nakji. Yes, we have this at home in the fridge. I forget what it's called in Czech. It's very salty and crisps up nicely under the broiler if you top lasagne or quesadillas with it. (Probably not what the czeesemakers intended, but it works.) Never seen it at a pub, though...but I'll have to try the mustard trick, which sounds very good!Now I'm starving.

Done well, it's really excellent... There's just a bit of jam and whipped cream, but they're sharp accent notes, I'd say. Exactly the same consistency and coating but with a different taste; hermelin, the cheese used, is Czech Brie. Instead of marinara on the side, it's served with tartar sauce. Yes, but the local/regional version of cream cheese, tvaroch (known as "topfen" in Germany and Austria, I think), is ubiquitous in dozens of varieties (cherry-flavored, pineapple-flavored, thick, smooth, etc. ad infinitum) and is a lot cheaper.* The cheesecake-making possibilities with tvaroch are endless. *(half the cost of Philly)

By the way, here's our kitchen. Spacious it ain't, but everything's within reach.

Hi, May--I'm hoping to get back to Passion Chocolat (the really lovely chocolatier in Vinohrady), this week... Hi, MarketStEl--you're right; my eG moniker means "streets" in Hebrew...mostly because I spent a lot of our time in Israel walking and finding all the great cafes and shuks (which I still miss.) And hauling groceries home. (We live about twenty minutes by tram from the center of Prague. My commute (to a suburb of Prague) is typically bus + metro + bus.) The recipe is a 1:1:1 ratio of softened butter, Boursin, and cream cheese; the rest (parsley, onion, etc.) is to taste. I'll have to do some hands-on roll research to answer those questions... We usually don't buy these and instead go for crusty bread like ciabatta. The housky and rohliky are good if they are very fresh, but they go soft quickly. Crusty bread seems hard to find here. Those photos are on buttons attached to the scale; you plunk down your bananas, hit the button with the photo of bananas, and bingo: the machine weighs the item and spits out a price tag for it. Unless, like me, you buy some obscure thing, can't find the picture or the number for it, and then you hold up everyone else in line. I don't think Anheuser-Busch won the case against Budvar in the EU...but I tend to only (and infrequently) drink really dark beer. Clearly, a trip to the Pivovarsky Klub (The Beer Club) is in order; thanks for reminding me. My Slovak colleague is a great cook; last week, she brought me wild game (marinated in wine) with berry sauce and dumplings, for lunch. Best office lunch EVER. Hi, Smithy; I really like these dishes:Vepro-knedlo-zelo (roast pork with dumplings and cabbage) Svickova (sirloin with a creamy vegetable sauce, wild-berry jam, and lemon slices on the side, with a dollop of whipped cream) Smazeny syr (fried cheese) I'd say these three are on nearly every pub menu in town, in some form... Maybe Gordon Ramsay's local branch of Maze does something sublime with fried cheese. I also have a deep and abiding love of Czech cakes and pastries (babovka, etc.). Believe me, those are also on the plan for this week.

Dobry den. Good morning... I need about three more cups of coffee. Breakfast photos of yogurt, bananas, and granola are still on my camera, but here are some of what lunch will be: tabbouleh. Tabbouleh purists should avert their eyes toward the end; I add lemon zest. After work, I'm off to the Tynska literary cafe with a colleague; the plans include nakladny hermelin (marinated cheese with onions and peppers) and beer.

My colleague from Slovakia made this for lunch and brought me some, today. It's Hungarian spread: equal parts softened butter, Boursin, and cream cheese, with chopped parsley or chives, half a chopped red onion, cumin, and some sweet and hot paprika. (Add sour cream if it's too thick.) Very good on toast. After my lunch snack, I walked to the supermarket near the office... It's enormous, with a whole food court on the second floor. The Czech contribution to the world of rolls, Part 1. (These are known as housky.) Czech gift to the world of rolls, Part 2. (These are rohliky.) Every supermarket and grocery store, from mega-marts to little corner shops, have piles of these. You can measure inflation by how much the price of rohliky has increased. Czocholate. Studentska, milk and dark chocolate studded with nuts and candied fruit. Tasty! I should eat less of this, but it's addictive. I blame my husband, who grew up on it. Sausages and all manner of hot dogs... Welcome to the land of bag and tag your own fruit and veg! Zavin (strudel); in this case, poppyseed strudel. I'm beginning to think it's possible to eat your weight in poppy seeds, here, every year; poppy seeds feature prominently in a lot of Cezch pastries. Mixed vegetables and herbs for soup... Vanocka (a pannettone-like bread mainly eaten at Christmas and Easter but sold year-round). You're probably saying, "Yes, well, that's all very well and good, but where is the BEER?!" So here you are... After work, I met my husband downtown for dinner at Cafe-Bar Platyz, which is hidden in a courtyard off of Narodni trida (in Prague 1). My husband had linguine with sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, and, in his words, "weeds." I had palacinky (crepes) with spinach and cheese (with great gooey strands the length of your arm )... They didn't photograph so well but were pretty good. We took a twenty-minute tram ride home and had tea and some poppyseed strudel. Ok, I'm exhausted and I didn't cook dinner. Props to you foodbloggers who did this with flair. Edited to blur a photo a bit more.

Thanks, Shelby! And thanks for the plug, Therese. I love it here...and you're right about public transport. I fell in love with a Czech guy when we were both in grad school. Then we got married. Then we moved to Israel (food bliss). Then we moved here (also food bliss, in a different sort of way). That all happened in the last four years. (Two here; two in Israel.) Mostly, I speak cafe Czech. I wouldn't say I'm fluent in much other than that, but now that I work in a company where the main language is Czech, it's starting to seep in. The Czech language is a tough-to-crack walnut.

Here's what I forgot to post, this morning... I commute for about an hour to work; I work for a publishing company in an outer suburb of Prague. The only interesting thing on my commute to work, food-wise, are these snack kiosks. (The options from work are much better.) Snack kiosk, other side... That man looks like he could use a doughnut. Minonky! Dark chocolate + wafers. Very good around 10:00 am with a second cup of coffee. Here's my reading material, at work. Gah...Sorry for the crazy photo sizes!

One of the things I'm looking forward to doing on my days off is going to this exhibit of the world of Prague cafes, which I hope will be full of vintage photos of cafes, coffee, and pastries from places like Kavarna Archa (Kafka's hangout), Kavarna Slavia (which Vaclav Havel helped to restore), and Cafe Louvre (haunt of Einstein and other greats). Erhartova cukrarna, which reopened a couple of months ago after work to restore it to its former 1920s-era gleam, is also on my list... (Kavarna = cafe. Cukrarna = patisserie/bakery/sweets shop, depending on where you are when you're reading this.)

Hi, johnnyd; the teaser photo of the market is a few weeks old... Not that it's warmed up much, since then. But at least the apple and cherry trees are beginning to blossom. Thanks for offering Picasa help; I'm sure I'll take you up on it! (I think the whole slew of photos I took with my phone, on my lunch-break trip to the supermarket, are beyond repair, though; we'll see...) Thanks, prasantrin. I'm American, originally from California and Colorado (which is why I lurk on the Southwest threads a lot, where it smells like home). I thus miss Mexican food tremendously, although the ingredients are becoming easier and easier to find, here. And there's a great Colombian restaurant in town where they make fabulous empanadas. I miss Cheetos a lot, to be absolutely honest. Hi, Lior/Ilona! I'm glad you popped in; my lunch today was from your part of the world. I think you'll recognize the contents of my pantry, by the way. Yes; nakji, I'm so glad you saw this... PHO! It's part of my quest, this week. There are three big Vietnamese markets in town, and I'm going to one....except (ahem) they're not exactly open to the public... There are a lot of Vietnamese immigrants and Czech Vietnamese; many of them run independent businesses (but no Vietnamese restaurants ) like the Ujezd vegetable market. All the fruit and veg from these markets are sourced from the three big wholesale ones, which is where all the good stuff--and the good pho stands--are! Hi, gfron1--my avatar is a pizzelle, one of those Italian cookies... My favorite food memory (to date) is when my family made something like this (or maybe ristrelli?) at home when I was very young. So all my favorite pastries somehow are flat and patterned and dusted with powdered sugar; this cookie had an imprinting effect on me... Kim, I loved your blog! Those onion rings are my desktop photo. I'm meeting my husband for dinner in town at a cafe and will post more photos (lunch, snack #1, snack #s 2-5 ) once I get home.

Hello, fair eG folk! Sorry for the late start. (Well, late for Europe; it's lunchtime.) Tracey was right. (However did you guess?!) Welcome to Prague. My name is Erin, and I live and work here, with my husband (who is Czech), in the city of a thousand spires (which also happen to look a lot like forks, when you're hungry...or so I think). The first teaser photo is on the far south side of Prague. It's of Cukrak mountain; "cukrak," roughly translated, means "little pastry chef." (Cukrak is about an hour from this Prague vista.) The second teaser photo, below, really is in Prague; it's of a fruit and vegetable market in the Ujezd neighborhood. They have the best fruit and veg in town (at least, in my opinion). I'm at work, today and tomorrow, and I'll tell you more about that later, because I spend the business day surrounded by cookbooks... After that, I have a few days off so I'm planning to roam around Prague and show you some hidden good stuff beyond roast pork, dumplings, and cabbage. Here's my plan for the week... Ask any questions you like about what you see. Unorganized bits of the plan... I'll post a bunch of photos later, but I have to warn you that my food photography skills are nowhere near the previous bloggers'.... Kim's blog and Chris's were truly mouthwatering. The good news is that I just discovered Picasa, this morning, so I may be able to spare you my blurry breakfast photos. Breakfast: turkey sandwich and coffee. It's about all I can do to assemble this. In fact, this is advanced, for me. I'm not a morning person at all. More anon.

Whenever I've been by it, Demel has always been stuffed to the gills with tourists...but if you can manage to fight your way to the back of the cafe, the pastry kitchen is in full view, floor to ceiling.

DG, I remember your Foodblog photo of your son with that giant jar of cheese balls! By the way, I vacuum up Cheetos dust in the same way you described, so I'll add Cheetos to my list of unstoppable snackables...

I can't find much from the Ma and Uma web site, but it does emphasize "JUNE." You could try emailing them; the address is at the bottom of their page. More culinary details in German.

I love this line! Beautiful glass--the green is so vibrant.

Chocolate (in all forms). Tortilla chips. Cookies. It's essentially Night of the Living-Dead Snacker if these things are anywhere near me.

The latest photos look awesome. In particular, I covet the floors.

Wow, that's seriously a teenager-sized bowl of udon. It looks bigger than my head.

Sorry if I missed it, Chris, but did you mention where all those PB&Js are destined for? By the way, the grid photos showing the step-by-step preparations are awesome!

Great; thank you both for your help.

Hello, Francophile eGers... I'm working on a cookbook translated from French to English and have run into something puzzling. Some of the recipes in the French version refer to "farine avec levure," which was translated as "flour with yeast." First, is "levure" really "yeast," here? Or is it baking powder? (In which case, is farine avec levure really self-rising flour?) If farine avec levure really is flour with yeast, is this unique to France, or have you seen it elsewhere? (I can't remember seeing it when I lived in France, but that was ten years ago.) Many thanks for your help.

Great photos, Chris! Everything looks really sharp and crisp (or crispy, given the bacon/pork fest). Did you already mention here or on another thread where you and your wife will be moving to--and what the food prospects are like there?

I suppose this is cheating, but I go through herbes de Provence more than anything else; I love it/them.

Here's one idea I read about, last week. Great idea--if you have the time...and like to crochet.