- •I 1.Now let's talk about food. What can you tell me about eating habits in your family?
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- •I 2.Do you like cooking? Why (not)?
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- •I 3.What questions will you ask a friend who has invited you to a pot-luck party?
- •I 4.Which national dishes can you recommend a tourist to taste in Belarus?
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- •I 5.Scientists say that fast food is unhealthy but teenagers can't stop eating it. What do you think about it?
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- •II 1.Now let's talk about food. What can you tell me about eating habits in Belarus?
- •II 2.Do you personally follow the rules of a healthy way of life? Why (not)?
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- •II 3.What questions can you ask a British friend about their national cuisine?
- •II 4.Can you tell me how to cook one of your favourite dishes?
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- •II 5.Most of the families want to have a big kitchen in the flat, but at the same time they have a meal together less and less often. What do you think about it?
- •III 1.Now let's talk about food. What can you tell me about eating habits in your family?
- •III 2.Do you often invite guests to have a meal together?
- •IV 2.Do you know many recipes?
- •IV 3.What questions can you ask a waiter when you are ordering a meal in a cafe?
- •IV 4.My friend wants to know more about national cuisines. Which national dishes would you recommend him to taste?
- •IV 5.A lot of pupils refuse to have meals at school. What do you think about it?
II 1.Now let's talk about food. What can you tell me about eating habits in Belarus?
See I 4
Belarusian national cuisine has a long history. Many dishes came to our time from the remote past. The most popular product and ingredient of the Belarusian cuisine is potato. It came to Belarus from Baltics and Poland in the era of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Potato is at the Belarusian table every season and in any state – fried, boiled, baked, stuffed. Potato is an ingredient for soups, and salads, and patties.
The secret of the Belarusian cuisine is that it is known, in combination with which products potato uncovers its taste the best – and it is pork and mushrooms. This very combination also can be considered as a peculiarity of the Belarusian traditional cuisine.
Dishes out of grated potato - pancakes, babki, draniki, kolduny and kletski - are also specialties of the cuisine.
It is specific, that the dishes of the Belarusian cuisine are rare hot and spicy – usually they lack pepper, parsley, garlic, dill and smallage.
One of the favorite specialties among all the generations of the Belarusians is, for sure, draniki - potato thick pancakes.
Babka is a national Belarusian dish out of grated potato and dressed with fried bacon, onion and meat. The dish is baked in the oven and served with sour cream and milk.
However, certainly, potato is not the only one that the Belarusians eat. Carrot, cabbage, peas, sorrel, mushrooms, berries, river fish, as well as cultured milk foods are also widely used in the cuisine.
Meat is cooked with a number of peculiarities. What the Belarusians and Ukrainians have in common is lard as an ingredient for many dishes. Fried lard is an appetible relish for different farinaceous and potato dishes. Also the Belarusians eat pork and beef .
Traditional meat dishes are vereshchaka (or machanka) – pieces of short ribs and sausage stewed with water or rye beer and brewed in flour, sour cream and onion and served with pancakes; kolduny - dish of various dough or potato, stuffed with meat or any other forcemeat with spices.
Soups of the Belarusian cuisine can be hot or cold. Hot soups are often mealy, with vegetables and grains. Condensed soups prevail – a specific Belarusian soup called zhur cooked on the oat sour liquor.
Kholodnik and okroshka are traditional cold soups.
The Belarusian cuisine cares not so much about some special ingredients, but the process of their cooking. Just one product (whether it is oatmeal, or rye flour, or potato) can be cooked, but then it is cooked complexly.
Oatmeal kissel is a vivid example of such an approach to cooking. It is got out of just one ingredient – oat, but it took a dozen of procedures for three days. Another example is, certainly, potato – the Belarusians make thousands of dishes out of it!
Natural and geographical conditions, surely, influenced the traditional dishes of Belarus. The Belarusians eat mushrooms, wild berries and plants. When speaking about drinks, the specialties of the cuisine are rye beer (called kvas), beresovik (kvas out of birch sap), medovukha (a drink out of honey, berries and herbs on the basis of fretting), sbiten (hot drink out of honey and spices).