Conquering my food qualms

So, Monday and Tuesday were food days. Monday, I cooked a – if I may say so myself – lovely lunch. As pictured, I pan-fried a steak (flank of some kind?), made some boiled potatoes with butter and onions and sautéed some red and yellow bell peppers with spinach and fresh tomatoes. The sautéed veggies were the best part, but I think I under-seasoned the beef. Regardless, I cooked meat. Tuesday, I had the urge to be even more adventuresome. I went to the grocery store with a list, some ingredients with Czech translations, to make tuna salad and alfredo (or some kind of cream) sauce…not in the same dish but as 2 separate meals/dishes. This is kind of big for me because I'm not a big fan of tuna to begin with and there is an entire row of canned fish products at the store. I guess it's the Scandinavian/North Sea influence, either that or the fact that the Czech Rep is landlocked, fresh fish isn't as popular. Anyway, tuna was easy because in Czech it's tunák. Actually, it's the pickles that ended up causing more of a problem. Although I read the ingredients on the pickle jar, I ended up getting a type that is a little sweet and this recipe needs dill – sour – pickles. But they weren't too bad and so the tuna salad ended up nice (for the rest of the recipe, it's about equal parts chopped apple and tuna to about half portions of chopped onion and dill pickle, mixed with mayo). I'm eating with ciabatta bread. Finding supplies for the alfredo sauce was a little more difficult. I had two recipes listed, not sure if I'd find what I needed. One is based on cream cheese and one on heavy cream. I've made it from scratch from cream cheese and liked it (basically, cream cheese and fresh grated parmesan and butter melted). According to my dictionary, cream cheese translates to žervé or smetanový sýr. Well, Czechs love a nice soft cheese on bread, topped with a variety of sliced cheese, smoked meat or fish, cucumbers, etc...so finding cream cheese was both easy and difficult. There was a wide variety of spreadable smetanový sýr. So, I found a brand that had the English words "cream cheese" and looked for something similar in the right amount. I feel pretty confident that what I bought will work; whether it will taste like I want will be another question. I haven't tried it yet but maybe another day. I also bought ingredients for Tortilla Soup, but I think I'm going to wait for my friend to bring me back some chili powder after Christmas. On a final note, after all this shopping, I ended up going out for dinner BUT I did find the International House of Groceries (IHOG) owned by and American (who happens to go to my church) and part of a popular/famous ex-pat restaurant (Red, Hot & Blues). Anyway, they have Kraft Mac & Cheese (about $3.50/box), Dr. Pepper (which I later found at the beverage store next to my flat…now all I need is DIET DP!), American bacon, Stove Top, Oreos and a variety of other American food "staples." Expensive but sometimes you need a fix J