Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Communistic Food- what is it? Will it Kill Me? Remnants of Communism in the Czech Republic

Cesky Raj National Park- 

Walking within the confines of the national park, we wade into the bushes to pick a few choice blackberries. Not quite ripe, and my friends hungry, we exit out the park for a few minutes to seek sustenance more satiating,
A black and white board shows the available choices. The kitchen is cold and grey, the silver colored pots on the stove the grandest decoration. If feng-shui exists, everything here is the polar opposite, the energy of this kitchen would drag down a full moon if it's orbit were any closer to earth. The Communistic Chef, a 50 something year old woman, who clearly grew up under Soviet Rule, looks like she hasn't smiled, perhaps ever. She throws around some cutlets of schnitzel like a garbage man would the trash he's tossing into an incinerator.
Our Communist Chef
 I order a small cup of soup out of politeness, and watch my friends squirm as they take a bite out of their "beef" goulash.
Marek explains how the dish reminds him of when he was a cook in the Czech Army. "We'd sell the beef we were given on the black market. We poor and broke live everybody, and I'm not proud of my actions, but we'd actually make money that way. To cover for what we'd done, we'd create 'beef stew' with zero meat. We'd throw in as many of the ingredients as we had, maybe we'd grind in some stone for weight and then use ketchup and sugar to add flavor to beef stone stew." (I'm pretty sure he was kidding about the stone, but who knows)
That's pretty much the Communistic Kitchen recipe used for the "tomato sauce"- ketchup, water, sugar, and some flour. The taste? Pretty much what I'd imagine stone soup would be like.
 Our food explained
Examining left-overs from weapons to gas masks of the Soviet Empire 

Sidenote: This incident is just another example of what I refer to as The Hangover of Communism still a commanding presence in the former Eastern bloc.

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