afternoon tea, with sandwiches, cakes, and, of course, a cup of tea. Cream
teas are popular. You have scones (a kind of cake) with cream and jam.
The evening meal is the main meal of the day for many people. They
usually have it quite early, between 6.00 and 8.00, and often the whole
family eats together.
On Sundays many families have a traditional lunch. They have roast meat,
either beef, lamb, chicken, or pork, with potatoes, vegetables, and gravy.
Gravy is a sauce made from the meat juice.
The British like food from other countries, too, especially Italian,
French, Chinese, and Indian. The British have in fact always imported food
from abroad. From the time of the Roman invasion foreign trade was a major
influence on British cooking. Another important influence on British
cooking was of course
the weather. The good old British rain gives us rich soil and green grass,
and means that we are able to produce some of the finest varieties of
meat, fruit and vegetables, which don’t need fancy sauces or complicated
recipes to disguise their taste. People often get take-away meals – you buy
the food at the restaurant and than bring it home to eat. Eating in Britain
is quite international!
British Cuisine.[9]
Some people criticize English food. They say it’s unimaginable, boring,
tasteless, it’s chips with everything and totally overcooked vegetables.
The basic ingredients, when fresh, are so full of flavour that British
haven’t had to invent sauces to disguise their natural taste. What can
compare with fresh pees or new potatoes just boiled and served with butter?
Why drown spring lamb in wine or cream and spices, when with just one or
two herbs it is absolutely delicious?
If you ask foreigners to name some typically English dishes, they will
probably say “Fish and chips” then stop. It is disappointing, but true
that, there is no tradition in England of eating in restaurants, because
the food doesn’t lend itself to such preparations. English cooking is found
at home so it is difficult to find a good English restaurant with a
reasonable prices.
In most cities in Britain you’ll find Indian, Chinese, French and
Italian restaurants. in London you’ll also find Indonesian, Mexican, Greek…
Cynics will say that this is because English have no “cuisine” themselves,
but this is not quite the true.
English breakfast.[10]
All people in the world have breakfast, and most people eat and drink
the same things for breakfast. They may eat different things for all the
other meals in the day, but at breakfast time, most people have the same
things to eat and drink – Tea or Coffee, Bread and butter, Fruit.
Some people eat meat for breakfast. English people usually eat meat at
breakfast time, but England is a cold country. It is bad to eat meat for
breakfast in hot country. It is bad to eat too much meat; if you eat meat
for breakfast, you eat meat three times a day; and that is bad in a hot
country. It is also bad to eat meat and drink tea at the same time, for tea
makes meat hard so that the stomach cannot deal with it
The best breakfast is Tea or Coffee, bread and Butter, fruit. That is
the usual breakfast of most people in the world.
How tea was first drunk in Britain.11
By the time tea was first introduced into this country (1660), coffee
had already been drunk for several years.
By 1750 tea had become the most popular beverage for all types and
classes of people – even though a pound of tea cost a skilled worker
perhaps a third of his weekly wage!
Tea ware.
Early tea cups had no handles, because they were originally imported
from China. Chinese cups didn’t (and still don’t) have handles.
As tea drinking grew in popularity, it led to a demand for more and more
tea ware. This resulted in the rapid growth of the English pottery and
porcelain industry, which not long after became world famous for its
products.
The tea break.
Nowadays, tea drinking is no longer a proper, formal, «social» occasion.
We don't dress up to “go out to tea” anymore. But one tea ceremony is still
very important in Britain – the Tea Break! Millions of people in factories
and offices look forward to their tea breaks in the morning and afternoon
Things to do.
1) Make a display of as many pictures, cut from magazines. As you can
showing different kinds of tea pots and tea cups.
2) Design your own kind of tea pots and tea cups.
American food and drink.[11]
The popular view outside the U.S.A. that Americans survive on
cheeseburgers, Cokes and French fries is as accurate as the American
popular view that the British live on tea and fish’n’chips, the Germans
only on beer, bratwurst, and sauerkraut, and the French on red wine and
garlic.
This view comes from the fact that much of what is advertised abroad as
“American food” is a very pretty flat, tasteless imitation. American beef,
for example, comes from specially grain-fed cattle, not from cows that are
raised mainly for milk production. As a result, American beef is more
tender and tasted better than what is usually offered as an “American
steak” in Europe. When sold abroad, the simple baked potato that comes hot
and whole in foil often lacks the most important element, the famous Idaho
potato. This has different texture and skin that comes from the climate and
soil in Idaho.
Even sometimes as basic as barbecue sauces shows difference from many of
the types found on supermarket shelves overseas. A fine barbecue sauce from
the Southside of Chicago has its own fire and soul. The Texas have a
competition each year for the hottest barbecue sauce (the recipes are kept
secret).
America has two strong advantages when it comes to food. The first is
that as the leading agriculture nation, she has always been well supplied
with fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables in great variety at relatively low
prices. This is one reason why steak or beef roast is probably the most
“typical” American food; it has always been more available. But good
Southern-fried chicken also has champions, as do hickory-smoked or sugar-
cured hams, turkey, fresh lobster, and other seafood such as crabs or
clams.
In a country with widely different climates and many fruit and vegetable
growing regions, such items as fresh grapefruit, oranges, lemons, melons,
cherries, peaches, or broccoli, iceberg lettuce, avocados, and cranberries
do not have to be imported. This is one reason why fruit dishes
and salads are so
common. Family vegetable gardens have been very popular, both as a hobby
and as a way to save money, from the days when most Americans were farmers.
They also help to keep fresh food on the table.
The second advantage America has enjoyed is that immigrants have brought
with them, and continue to bring, the traditional foods of their countries
and cultures. The variety of foods and styles is simply amazing. Whether
Armenian, Basque, Catalonian, Creole, Danish, French, German, Greek,
Hungarian, Italian, traditional Jewish, Latvian, Mexican, Vietnamese or
what have you, these traditions are now also at home in the U.S.A.
There seem to be four trends in America at present which are connected
with foods and dining. First, there has been a notable increase in the
number of reasonably priced restaurants which offer specialty foods. These
include those that specialize in many varieties and types of pancakes,
those that offer only fresh, baked breakfast foods, and the many that are
buffets or salad bars. Secondly, growing numbers of Americans are more
regularly going out to eat in restaurants. One reason is that they are not
many American women do not feel that their lives are best spent in the
kitchen. They would rather pay a professional chef and also enjoy a good
meal. At the same time, there is an increase in fine cooking as a hobby for
both men and women. For some two decades now, these have been popular
television series on all types and styles of cooking, and the increasing
popularity can easily be seen in the number of best-selling specialty
cookbooks and the number of stores that specialize in often exotic cooking
devices and spices.
A third is that as a result of nationwide health campaigns, Americans in
general are eating a much light diet. Cereals and grain foods, fruit and
vegetables, fish and salads are emphasized instead of heavy and sweet
foods. Finally, there is the international trend to “fast food” chains
which sell pizza, hamburgers, Mexican foods, chicken, salads and
sandwiches, seafoods and
various ice creams. While many Americans and many other people resent this
trend and while, as many be expected, restaurants also dislike it, many
young, middle-aged, and old people, both rich and poor, continue to buy and
eat fast foods.
Hot Dogs.[12]
Tad Dorgan, a sports cartoonist, gave the frankfurter its nickname in
1906. Munching on a frank at a baseball game, he concluded that it
resembled a dachshund’s body and put that whimsy into a drawing, which he
captioned “Hot dog”.
Sausages go all the way back to ancient Babylon, but the hot dog was
brought to the U.S.A. shortly before the Civil War by a real Frankfurter –
Charles Feltman, a native of Frankfurt, Germany, who opened a stand in New
York and sold grilled sausages on warmed rolls – first for a dime apiece,
later, a nickel.
The frank appealed to busy Americans, who – as an early 19th century
