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The simple things: apples and noodles and such /Jednoduche ceske recepty

If you have not grown up in Czech/Slovakia you may be put off by such ‘peasant’ dishes but we love them!

The first image is just simple mixture of noodles, poppy-seeds, sugar, butter and a pinch of cinnamon.

The second dish is more healthy, you simply just grind apples and carrots together in a bowl and squeeze about one half of lemon in it to make it taste more sour and to keep the fruits and vegetables from turning brown.

CZ: obrazky klasickych jednoduchych jidel: nudle s makem a nastrouhana mrkvicka s jablickem a citronem….mnam!

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33 comments… add one
  • Vlastimil June 4, 2011, 7:48 am

    Not more longer and we will eat this here too 🙂

  • Romana Osborne June 4, 2011, 9:03 am

    Jeee, ja sem na to totalne zapomnela, dekuju!

  • Sona June 4, 2011, 9:56 am

    I would recommend to grind the apples and carrots smaller, the blend together much better, we also put a teaspoon of powdered sugar.
    The noodles are so good, we used to make them home all the time because of my sister who was definitely addicted to it. You don’t ground the poppies Tanja? It’s hard to tell from the picture.

  • MariKa June 4, 2011, 5:02 pm

    My friend was once in a car crash and I took care of her newborn 6mo old year old baby girl for 6mo, I used to make her noodles like this except the noodles were the bigger once so she could pick them up, the onces that look like little tubes… she loooooved it. Now that her mom is raising her she’s back to American food. Ham and milk. I can’t seem to talk her mom into feeding her better, but I’m not a preaching type of vegan. I offer info and let people decide for themselves.
    I’m in such a mood for an apple strudel it’s insane, but who wants to use the oven in this heat? Even with the cool air running inside it’s just not it. But that’s all I’ve been wanting, is some nice Czech pecivo. Have to go to the Russian store for some drozdi and I’ll make some next week, definitely. YUM

  • Sarka June 4, 2011, 8:45 pm

    My grandma used to put bananas into the carrot mixture….that is if there were bananas available

  • Tanja June 4, 2011, 8:48 pm

    Sono, no I don’t grind the poppies, I am lazy to do that plus I like the extra crunch 🙂

  • Tanja June 4, 2011, 8:51 pm

    PS: no jo, banany, ty bejvavaly cennejsi (dve n??) nez zlato!

  • Vlastimil June 4, 2011, 10:31 pm

    Although bananas have a pseudo-scientific reputation as a high-potassium food, potatoes contain twice as much potassium as bananas. Logically, the potatoes were plentiful in Communist Czechoslovakia, while bananas could be bought in special stores for elite members in Communist Party. Since Communists knew that hard working working class needed lot of potassium to be able to perform difficult task of building communist society of tomorrow, communists decided they would sacrifice themselves and eat a potato replacement (known as bananas) so working class could enjoy healthy huge potatos instead. Working class knew that bananas were bad replacement for potatoes and demanded “better future for our childern without bananas” 😉

  • MariKa June 5, 2011, 1:06 am

    Okay Vlastimil either you’re exaggerating on purpose or you’re just going bannanas!

    I lived in a small town two hrs south of Prague and our little market ALWAYS had bannanas in the summer. There was no ‘bananna conspiracy’ as far as I know springing from the communist regime, but it would make one hell of a title for a book ;))

  • Vlastimil June 5, 2011, 7:03 am

    It is true that somehow and quite often the selection of fruits and vegetables was better in remote villages than in Prague. And there is an explanation… In the middle of nowhere everybody had a supply of domestically grown vegetables and fruits and and it was almost legal to steal from farm cooperatives.
    Then logically, why would they pay money for bananas, if they can steal something similar. That’s why in these villages supply of food in stores was quite good compared to Prague.

  • MariKa June 5, 2011, 7:48 am

    I did not live in a village. This was a city, very modern, very industrial.
    I admit that there was abundace of food and if you got to the market late you didn’t have bannanas, but guess what, in the US they have rain check slips for that very reason.

  • Vlastimil June 5, 2011, 6:05 pm

    I remembered bananas being sold in Prague and even water melons. They did not appear on counter very often and I did not care. Bananas were not really important in my life. As a kid, I preferred to steal apples and strawberries from my neighbor …. I know, US food stores are not perfect either. They carry the real “Acai” juice very rarely and cheeses imported from France are being sold already spoiled ….

  • Honza June 6, 2011, 8:08 pm

    The name of the country is the Czech Republic, or you can use Czechia, as is the EU norm. “Czech” is an adjective. Saying “I’m in Czech” is the equivalent of saying “I’m in American” or “I’m in English”…. you get the point.

  • Honza June 6, 2011, 8:11 pm

    Vlastimil, you’re an absolute moron. Bananas were found when in season. They were always plentiful and imported from Cuba and Vietnam. I remember having them quite often as a child, the same with oranges, etc. Watermelon was quite plentiful, it’s one of the main crops in Slovakia!

    Tuzex wasn’t for the elite, it was a store where you could buy products destined for export. However, what are stores such as Gucci? Stores for the capitalist elite… where is your critique?

  • Vlastimil June 7, 2011, 4:05 am

    Honza, it means I lived in a bad part of Czechoslovakia…. I did not see bananas very often, and watermelons were easier to get in Kazachstan than in Prague

  • MariKa June 7, 2011, 8:00 am

    Honza come on, saying ‘absolute moron’ is like ‘absolute zero’ isn’t that an oxymoron? :)))
    Don’t be so harsh on Vlastimil, he means well. PS: thank you for the explanation of Czech, drives me nuts how people use the word, but then again, almost everyone posting here has English as a second language so again, we shan’t criticize, no one’s perfect.

  • Katkazameriky June 8, 2011, 6:40 am

    Vlastimil, you’re an absolute genious! 😉 Your posts always give me a smile 🙂

  • Vlastimil June 8, 2011, 10:23 pm

    MariKa, thank you for defending me 😉
    Katkazameriky, I am glad I can help your day fly 🙂
    Honza, sorry you are mistaken regarding Tuzex. You could not simply walk into the Tuzex store and show money with picture of Klement Gottwald.. You would not be served. But green bucks from hated imperialist USA worked quite well. In case you were receiving dollars for your work in Czechoslovakia, then I understand, it was no big deal to be shopping in Tuzex. Unfortunately, I had to buy special fake money (called “bony”) on black market. Then I could go in and buy stuff, which Americans would call: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

  • Katkazameriky June 9, 2011, 10:55 am

    Vlastimil, did you see the movie Občanský Průkaz? There’s a scene in there regarding the store and buying “bony” from the black market. My husband had to pause the movie and explain to me what type of store it was, what the lady was exchanging with the guy outside the store, etc. He explained it just as you have above.

  • Vlastimil June 9, 2011, 1:05 pm

    Katkazameriky , unfortunately I have not seen the movie, I don’t have access to any of them. On netflix the selection of Czech movies is more than limited . I will try to download the ” Občanský Průkaz” from the web … where everything is free 🙂

  • MariKa June 9, 2011, 2:13 pm

    Katkazameriky,
    I read your post twice, didn’t understand it; I didn’t understand WHY I didn’t understand it THEN I RE-read your post and realized I kept seeing the word ‘gay’ instead of ‘guy’ and THEN I got it. It made for a nice laugh.

  • katkazameriky June 10, 2011, 9:19 am

    LOL @MariKa that’s pretty funny. Vlastimil, there are free sites to download it. I don’t know of them, but that’s how we got the movie. A friend of ours downloads them from somewhere. He’s trys to get a lot with English subtitles so I can understand. If I remember correctly, you’re wife is American right? So you may want to try for the subtitles as well 🙂

  • Vlastimil June 11, 2011, 4:42 am

    katkazameriky , those free sites you are talking about are sites braking copyright law 😉
    Regarding my wife, I have to disappoint you, she is not American, instead she is Russian as hell 🙂

  • Marika June 12, 2011, 2:25 am

    Vlastimil,
    I like reading your posts too. I also remember standing in line as a kid on bananas and oranges right before Christmas in -20 degrees Celsia for two hours or so. Tuzex was only for “elite people”.

  • Vlastimil June 12, 2011, 7:19 am

    Marika, yes. Tuzex was for “elite” , but if you managed to buy “bony” on black market (which was interestingly run by StB-Czech secret police) , then you could buy the “good” western stuff as well.
    There were also other stores, where only “real elite” was admitted, it was only for high ranked communist and their mistresses. I knew couple of those women (we were only good friends, no intimacy was involved : ) ( I was already married after all) and they told me was was going on. And there were huge discounts in these stores ….

  • Jana V June 13, 2011, 4:00 pm

    My mom would make homemade egg noodles so it was a treat to have poppyseed, noodles with melted butter. I would always make it with the egg yolk noodles or no yolk kind instead of the ones in the picture but that is just what I am used too. Another variation is chopped nuts, we have 10 pecan trees so we would pick them, and once shelled chop them. Then we would put them on our noodles with sugar and melted butter. That is just our family. My parents would only see fruits like oranges and bananas ONLY at Christmas time. My grandmother worked in a coop grocery store in a village and she told me no exotic fruit until Christmas time so I guess Vlastimil’s family and my family lived in the bad part of the country. 🙂

  • Sarka June 14, 2011, 9:41 pm

    same here – oranges and bananas only at christmas time

  • Greg June 16, 2011, 7:49 am

    This dish sounds like an even poorer mans Flicky, minus the shunkou. i’ll have to ry it, my wife loves poppy seeds. Thanks for the recipe.

    greg

  • Jarina Marie June 16, 2011, 8:44 am

    I did love Nudle s makem and my sister Nudle s mlekem,my father Nudle se spenatem and my mom just Nudle homemaid with butter, weird tastes or just weird Czechs?I am not sure we would crave these today and here either:)

  • MariKa June 16, 2011, 1:20 pm

    Yowant to talk about weird tastes- try my favorite- plain yoghurt, kilo sugar on top with Tabasco sauce!
    🙂

  • Jarina Marie June 17, 2011, 10:14 am

    MariKa that sounsd almost like rye bread with lard and strawbery jam,some other weird tastes/or people/:))

  • Vlastimil June 17, 2011, 11:50 am

    It is nothing compared to what I saw in Amsterdam when I was working there on a project. In company’s cafeteria people had a bread with butter, then they put sliced orange on the bread and drunk milk and were happy. I tried it as well, and when my stomach started protesting I whished I could find some Tabasco to put it a coleslaw I had next to the sliced orange…

  • Kristina September 18, 2011, 7:22 pm

    Mak som si samozrejme doniesla so sebou, ale ti nudle musim este najst. Mozno nieco bude v World Market….. uvidime 🙂

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