In our country daily meals usually start with breakfast

which consists of something to drink – tea (with milk or with lemon) or cocoa, warm or hot milk, black coffee – and something to eat, e. g. one or two slices of bread and butter and cheese or eggs, ham, salami, jam etc. Instead of bread we can eat rolls or buns or we can have something sweet – cakes, doughnuts or gingerbread. Quite a lot of people eat cereal for their breakfast – either cornflakes or porridge or muesli – they also sometimes add various ingredients like yoghurt, raisins, chocolate, stewed fruit, walnuts, hazelnuts etc. Breakfast usually takes place between 6 and 7 o’clock.

Around noon (but in our school sometimes at half past two p. m.) we have our lunch, which is warm and consists of some soup, a main dish, something to drink and salad or dessert. Most people go to a school, office or factory canteen but some prefer going to a restaurant or having a fast lunch in a buffet or a snack bar or buying something at street stalls.

Soups are either vegetable soups (potato, tomato, pea, bean, carrot, parsley, celery, mushrooms) or meat teas (beef tea, tripe, chicken, hen or goulash soup etc.). Some people cook fruit soups (e. g. strawberry soup).

The main dish can be either sweet – e.g. strawberry or plum dumplings, pancakes with jam and cream, baked yeast dumplings, doughnuts etc. Or we can have some meat or fish or poultry with some vegetables such as potatoes, chips, rice, Czech dumplings, pasta or bread. We distinguish the following types of meat: beef, pork, veal, mutton, lamb, game and we can prepare it in various ways – roast it, grill it, boil it, bake it or stew it – we can mince or smoke some kinds of meat. Poultry is things like chicken, hen, duck, turkey and goose. Lots of people in our country eat rabbits. The main fish cooked in our country is carp (it is a traditional Christmas meal – battered carp and potato salad) and trout.