The food: Sheep Cheese Dumplings with Bacon (Bryndzové Haluškz so Slaninou)

Where to find it: Bratislava, Slovakia

Note: Longa Travels Productions is now filming its food & travel TV show in Spain & Portugal for the next month.

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Back in school, my swim team and I often endured the infamous “test set” swim practices. They would often entail leg-and-arm-prostrating sprints from point A back to point A a billion times across our chlorinated, Olympic-sized abyss. After the point of near-puking exhaustion, we’d limp out of the pool, slither into our carpools home and hang our weary faces over a microwaved bowl of re-energizing reclamation: Kraft’s Easy Mac and Cheese. Here’s a meal that could juice up Schwarzenegger’s post bench-press pecks or beef up Kirstie Alley’s hips. Carb heaven.

Although Easy Mac looks like child’s play compared to Slovakia’s sheep cheese dumplings. Hearty Slovakian farmhands and rural grandmother babushkas harvest sheeps’ milk, buttermilk and potatoes to churn together something sinfully carb-tastic and thick. The plate has the texture of mac and cheese, but schools Kraft with respect to heaviness and overall brawn-factor.

Every time I return to Europe I’m so astounded by its culinary diversity. Right now, I’m filming in costal Portugal where the cod fish and tomato salads add something light to your summer evening meal. On the other side of the continent, I can get this sheep cheese baaaaad boy (read like you’re baaaa’ing like a sheep); a dish that’ll whoop any Central European winter frost and Easy Mac microwavable B.S. meal.