Hi there, my name is Petra Kupská, and I come from the Czech Republic, a small country in Central Europe.
I married a charming man 20 years ago, and we have two wonderful sons, ages 15 and 17 (in 2020).
Where do we live?
Our family lives in Chrastava, a small pleasant town in northern Bohemia, surrounded by the Jizera Mountains.
The German and Polish borders are only a stone's throw away. The area is called a "Tri-Border Area," as it is the tripoint of the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland, as all three countries' borders meet very near.
Behind the CookLikeCzechs.com
You may be wondering:
Why's a Czech woman starting a blog in English?
This idea wasn't born in easy times. In March 2020, Europe and America – actually the whole world – started fighting the Coronavirus pandemic.
On March 18, 2020, the Czech government declared a state of emergency for the first time in the Czech Republic's history.
Schools and most shops were closed. The new rules limited citizens' movement to the necessary minimum – people could go to work, do the necessary shopping, and take care of their elderly relatives.
I stayed at home with the boys while my husband was still going to work.
My sons never stop eating. Unless you have one, you can’t imagine how hungry teenagers at this age can be. For me, this means spending almost all day, every day in the kitchen, making breakfast, snacks, lunch, and dinner.
Children studied from home, and teachers set them their work via Google Classroom. One of the essential subjects at school is English.
And the idea for this blog came from here.
So that my older son did not forget all the things he already knows, we’ve made a deal:
I'll cook, then write a recipe in the Czech language, and my son will translate everything into English.
Then we'll put the recipe into this blog.
I think it was a good way to get over the adversity of that situation. The outlook wasn’t very positive. We didn't know whether we'd end up being at home for weeks or even months.
I've decided to cook and share mostly Czechoslovakian recipes here. Czech and Slovak cuisine is very traditional, with many unique dishes, like svíčková sauce or sweet kolache, it has a lot to offer.
Moreover, Czechs and Slovaks lived for many decades in one country, former Czechoslovakia, before we split in 1992.
I hear you asking – what about my skills and potential?
I've been cooking for over 20 years and am a self-taught home cook. As such, I have more than enough experience, and I know a lot of little tricks and how to cook food to make it taste great. I can pick the right ingredients for each recipe to make it as good as possible.
I've got some fabulous Czech cookbooks on hand; my parents gifted me one when I got married.
The cookbooks include a lot of Bohemian and Moravian culinary treasures. All the recipes here on the blog were cooked, tried, and approved by me and the hardest critics of all, my two boys.
The recipes posted here are mostly from these cookbooks, and I can say they're the best you can get.
P. S. We're not native speakers, and as such, please excuse any grammatical errors or weird sentences you may find. Thank you :o)
Back to the kitchen! Enjoy this food blog and every single dish you decide to try out. And as we say in Czech, "Dobrou chuť!"
➜ Where to start? Jump to the page with Recipe Index
My mission is to keep Czech culinary heritage alive by sharing recipes with nostalgic hearts worldwide.
I believe that Czech recipes do more than just make people's stomachs happy. Sometimes, they make people's hearts happy, too!