Food and drinks

Food and drinks are very important in human life because we cannot exist without eating and drinking. It’s common that every country has a typical national dish and habits of eating and drinking.

However, in basic we can say that people all around the world have breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner. For breakfast most people have a cup of tea or coffee and children drink milk, hot chocolate, cacao or a glass of juice. We eat bread and butter with ham, cheese or jam, cereals, toast or yogurt. English breakfasts are very well-known. English breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans, toasted bread, black pudding with orange juice and English tea.

For some people, except the English and Spanish, lunch is the main dish of the day. During the week working people have half an hour or an hour for lunch. They can eat in a canteen or restaurant. In Slovakia Sunday lunch is very important because families can eat together. Sunday lunch consists of soup, a main course and cake.

English and Spanish people prefer to have dinner. They eat very late at 8 – 9 o’clock in the evening. It’s because in England people work until late hours and in Spain because of the hot weather. We can cook our food at home; we can buy ready to eat food in supermarkets  which need to be heated in the oven or microwave, we can have a take away or delivery or we can go to eat out to the restaurant or fast food. Fast (junk) food is unhealthy and can cause many people to have overweight problems.

In restaurants we order our food and drink from the menu. Typical manus offer a starter (soup, salad), a main course (meat, fish, pizza, pasta) and a desert (pancake, tiramisu, creme caramel). When people have a formal lunch or dinner they often start by drinking an aperitif and then during eating they drink wine, beer or non alcohol drinks (juice, coca-cola, sparkling or still mineral water). In top restaurants the desert is the most important dish and also the most expensive.

There are different types of meat: beef, pork, lamb and poultry. Poultry includes chicken, duck, turkey and goose. Meat can be prepared in various ways; it can be grilled, boiled, baked, roasted, stewed, minced or smoked. Stake can be cooked well-done, medium or rare. During cooking we use seasons such as salt, pepper, thiamine, marjoram, rosemary, oregano, basil and ingredients like garlic, Soya sauce, mustard, Worchester sauce etc.
Slovak cuisine includes lots of soups, different types of meat with rice and potatoes. We also prepare game and one of the delicacies is a boiled tongue of deer. Japanese cuisine is well-known for sushi (raw fish), Italians cuisine includes lots of pizza and pasta and Indian cuisine is known for very spicy food.