independent as a hog on ice
Via misterpants: pictures of KISS fans in Japan. These are great.
I have this measuring cup made by a Czech glassware company. It came with a couple of Czech recipe suggestions, e.g.:
PORK ARM ROAST IN BEER
A classic Czech Dish that is tasty and delicious.
1 1/2 lbs. Pork arm roast--cubed, 1 large onion--chopped, 2 tablespoon cooking oil, 1 1/2 cups cubed rye bread (remove crust), 1 cup beer, 1 cube beef bouillon dissolved in 2 1/4 cups water or two cups beef stock, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, and 1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds.
Heat medium sauté pan with 2 tablespoons cooking oil; brown onions until tender. Add cubed pork and brown slowly while adding salt, pepper, caraway seeds, and dissolved beef bouillon or beef stock. Cook 40 minutes watching that the liquid does not dissolve, add water as needed. While meat is cooking, soak rye bread in beer, remove meat and pour rye bread and beer mixture into cooking liquid; stir often. Simmer for 10 minutes, place entire liquid in blender; blend until smooth; return meat and blended liquid to casserole. Cook in 325 degree over for 30 minutes.
There's also a beer cake, so we can see where Czech cuisine places its priorities.
On the other hand, I can't recommend Jiri Grusa's The Questionnaire highly enough. He's a friend of Vaclav Havel's and originally circulated the novel in an underground edition of nineteen typewritten copies, which landed him in jail for "initiating disorder." He's currently the Czech ambassador to Austria, where Joerg Haider no doubt makes him nervous. But the novel itself is excellent, told from a dreamy, constantly shifting perspective that I want to call "magical realist" only because I can't think of a more precise description. The trope is that the narrator is completing a standard employment questionnaire, and in mock obesiance to the questionnaire's request for completeness he writes a generation-spanning, impressionistic history of himself, his family and his hometown. Really beautiful, often funny, and sometimes scary as hell.
