Czech Foods Recipes

Thumb through any eastern European cookbook and search out pastry recipes. Some of these recipes may actually call out the use of butter, but many will require lard. Nowadays trying to find lard in a mainstream grocery store is not so easy; at least where I live. They do have it at my local Meijer store, but this ancient ingredient is sort of tucked away hidden in a very non-descript location. It is treated like the ugly duckling of the shortening pack. I could not disagree more with this treatment of lard! Give lard its due and position it where everyone can find it. Some of us are old school and prefer to use the bakery ingredients our grandparents used in the old country or on the farm.   I would certainly use lard long before I would consider using synthetic oils such as oleo or margarine. While the cholesterol levels of these shortening substitutes may be much lower than butter or lard, these products are synthetic. Synthetic means the body will not break it down. Does that so...

Owning a deep fryer means the sky is the limit to the amount of different tasty items one can fry up. The process of deep frying can be quite cumbersome given the mess and the ability to only get a few turns out of one batch of cooking oil. Eventually the used oil has to get discarded and you have to start all over again. This leads me to the worst part of the deep frying process, the cleanup. I currently use a cool daddy deep fryer by Presto. My favorite frying items include fried chicken (Paula Den recipe), buffalo wings, donuts (paczki), and occasional fried potatoes. There are many copy cat oven baked substitute recipes for these items that simply do not measure up the deep fried method. I have no reservations cooking with oil with regards to the odor, the grease, or the heat. I actually have a deep fry table in my garage set up for special frying occurrences. My hang up with deep frying is all in the cleaning. Removing the Used Oil in Deep Frying Once the oil has been pushed to it...

Ok. I have successfully shed about twenty two pounds since New Year’s Day. I have no ambition to lose too much more as I am just about where I want to be. My peak scale moment was 205 and worked my weigh (pun intended) down to currently 183. The weight loss effort was pretty painless as I did nothing extreme or drastic to get my weight down. Not once did I have to go Atkins, South Beach, Zone, or weight Watchers. My solution has been calorie counting, pure and simple with a combination of calorie burning. I have found that forgoing “Seconds” and sneaking in four to five long walks goes a long way on shedding some pounds. One area that has contributed enormously to my weight loss is getting accustomed to having a zero calorie beverage with lunch and dinner. Yes that includes occasionally water, but we all know that runs pretty tiresome fairly quickly.   Through trial and error of exploring many different zero calorie beverages, I have found five very tasty drinks that go well with m...

Things are starting to heat up as summer draws near. Warmer temps once again mean using the oven less and opting for the stove and outdoor grill. Before it gets too hot, I need to enjoy a few more heavy Czech meals until the autumn season brings forth cooler temperatures. One dish that comes to mind is Czech Gulas also known as goulash, or gulash. Gulas is a stew meat dish that has effectively worked its way around eastern and central Europe with slight variations found across every country. I have seen Gulas on Czech and Polish menus at restaurants in the States that bear distinguishable differences. The main variances have been in the thickness of the sauce as well as the color.   Some goulash will appear more “paprika red” while others appear more brown like Stroganoff.   Goulash also can be served over a variety of side dishes whether it is egg noodles, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, or dumplings (knedliky). I prefer this dish over egg noodles, but will never pass up th...