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In our age of celebrity chefs and cookbooks for all skill levels and wallet sizes, we may sometimes forget that food was an important element of life surrounded by special rituals, beliefs and values for many a decade. In this edition of Czech Life I decided to find out what importance food had a hundred or so years ago in this region. In order to do that, I headed to the ethnographic department of the Czech National Museum, where the exhibit Krmě - jídlo – žrádlo, or Dish-Meal-Grub is currently on display.

One old proverb goes: “The way to a man's heart is through his stomach”. It may be true, that good cooking can win a man’s love. The pastry chef Iveta Fabešová believes that when it come to women, it is the cooking itself that can bring them closer together. The author of a number of popular cookbooks, Iveta decided to test out this hypothesis in a new multi-media, and multi-flavored, project Mothers and Daughters, or Matky a dcery in Czech.

Canoeing or rafting in the Czech Republic for many is more than a sport or pastime it is a way of life, a tradition going back decades that is capped on summer evenings with summer bonfires, pork sausages (špekáčky), music and beer. Web developer Igor Lobovský, an avid canoeist himself, earlier this year launched a no-nonsense website (with a nostalgic 8-bit logo) called Vodáci sobě helping users navigate among the country’s many boat rental companies. The aim was not only to help users get a good deal but also to help smaller companies get broader

Tram and car traffic is heavy on Prague’s Dukelských Hrdinů St. – not a very inviting location to open a business in the middle of the financial crisis. Yet the 45-year-old cook gone entrepreneur Petr Kosiner has set up his store Lázníčkový knedlík here. It is the only brick-and-mortar shop in Prague to sell homemade dumplings. Since it opened seven months ago, the store and the humble goods it sells have turned out to be so popular that already its owner has a hard time keeping up with the huge demand. Both restaurant professionals and regular

A rich, and certainly idiosyncratic, museum has joined Prague’s list of attractions. The collection devoted to, let’s say answering the call of nature, is the result of a Czech couple’s trawling of junk shops, antique stores and auction houses for chamber pots and toilets. The result ranges from the most humble clay pot to those designed and used by presidents and emperors.

One of Prague’s most recent new museums is dedicated to the art of cooking through the ages, with a particular look at the Czech contribution to cuisine. The museum features special themed tours and cooking workshops, which have been a big hit with visitors.

Child obesity continues to be a problem in the Czech Republic, having risen markedly in recent years. The popularity of increasingly passive activities from spending more and more time on the computer to the internet certainly have not helped. That’s where organisers of two projects underway – Škola plná zdraví and Česko se hýbe – hope to make a major difference.

The Czech family has changed in many ways in the past two decades, with new values and gender models entering the homes, and Communist-era mentality and standards partly waning. One growing phenomenon that few want to talk about is the increasing number of single mothers. Currently, about one in every five children in this country grows up with a single parent. And most of the around 200,000 single caretakers are women. Within the EU, the Czech Republic has one of the highest percentages of single mothers within its population.

Following the recent election, there has been a renewed focus on party sponsoring, including an expected shift by some donors to newer political parties following poor results by more traditional ones that held the playing field until now. The shift is being studied by politickefinancovani.cz, headed by American sociologist and teacher at Prague’s Institute of Sociology, Michael L. Smith. He told me more about his role in the project and how the major focus continues to be the need for greater transparency.

The number of foreigners working in Czech households is on the rise, although there are few exact statistics about this relatively unofficial economic sector. More and more Czechs hire part-time cleaners and live-in nannies from Ukraine, Belarus, the Philippines and many other countries. What happens to them behind closed doors, though, is not a topic many like to talk about. A new NGO campaign to draw attention to the rights of migrant domestic workers decided to take an unusual approach to the matter – recruiting a big-shot ad agency and a glitzy