Text 20 Talking about English Meals

The usual English meals are breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. The usual English breakfast is porridge (made of oats and water) or cornflakes with milk or cream and sugar, bacon and eggs, marmalade (made from oranges) with buttered toast and tea or coffee.

Lunch is about one o’clock. We have cold meat (left over probably from yesterday’s dinner), potatoes, salad and pickles, with a pudding or fruit to follow. Sometimes we have a chop, or a steak and chips, followed by biscuits and cheese.

Afternoon tea you can hardly call a meal but it is a sociable sort of thing, as friends often call in then for a chat while they have their cup of tea, cake or biscuits.

In some houses dinner is the biggest meal of the day. But in a great many English homes, the midday meal is the chief one of the day, and in the evening we have a much simpler supper – an omelette, or sausages, sometimes bacon and eggs and sometimes just bread and cheese, a cup of coffee or cocoa and fruit.

We have «high tea» between 5 or 6 o’clock, and we have ham or tongue and tomatoes and salad, or tinned fish, or sausages with good strong tea, plenty of bread and butter, stewed fruit, or a tin of pears, apricots or pineapples with cream and pastries or a good cake.

Answer these questions:

1. What are the usual English meals? 2. What do usually English people eat for breakfast? 3. When do the English have lunch? 4. What is the biggest meal of the day? 5. What do usually English people eat for supper? 6. What do you know about «high tea»?

Text 21 Food in Britain

Britain has some excellent traditional food: lamb from Wales, shellfish and fresh salmon from Northern Ireland, fresh or smoked fish from Scotland, cheese from England and Wales. Unfortunately, good British food is difficult to find. Only 2 per cent of restaurants in London serve British food. There are many more Italian, Chinese and Indian restaurants.

Restaurants serving «British» food tend to be either very expensive and found in luxury hotels, or cheap and nasty serving mainly fried food. You can eat a good «British» meal without spending a lot of money by going to a pub. Most pubs now serve good value hot and cold meals. They often have family areas where people under 16 can sit and eat.

People in Britain are more likely to eat fast food than go out to eat in a posh restaurant. A hamburger and French fries is the most popular fast-food meal in Britain, but not all fast food is American. Kebab houses, often run by Greek or Turkish Cypriots, are very popular.

People spend less time cooking now. An increasing number of people eat convenience food in the evenings. Convenience meals are already cooked – all you have to do is heat them up in the microwave.

Answer these questions:

1. What traditional food has Britain? 2. What restaurants are there in London? 3. What kind of meal can you eat in the pub? 4. What is the most popular fast-food meal in Britain? 5. Do many people eat convenience food in the evenings?