Traditional English meals

Traditionally English people have three meals a day

Breakfast eleven o’clock tea lunch five o’clock tea dinner

Breakfast

Breakfast is served in the morning. It used to be a large meal with cereal, eggs and bacon, sausages, tomatoes. British people may eat this breakfast on weekends or on special occasions but every day prefer smaller and healthier meal to start a day. Such a large breakfast takes long time to prepare and is not very healthy. Nowadays, the most popular breakfast consists of cereal, toast with marmalade, juice and yogurt with a cup of tea or coffee.

Task 1. Translate the words from the text:

Cereal ____________, eggs _____________, bacon _____________, sausages _____________, tomatoes ________________, toast with marmalade _____________________________, juice __________, yogurt __________________.

Task 2. Answer the questions:

1. How many meals do English people have? ________________________________________

2. When is breakfast usually served? _______________________________________________

3. What does traditional breakfast consist of? ________________________________________

4. What can you say about breakfast nowadays? ______________________________________

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Lunch

Lunch is light meal and is eaten at school or at work at one o’clock. Lunch usually takes 40 minutes. For lunch British people usually have cold meat, potatoes, salad and pickles with pudding of fruit to follow, mutton chop or steak and chips. A businessman in London usually finds it impossible to come home for lunch, and so he goes to a café or a restaurant. Some people like a glass of light beer with lunch.

Task 3. Answer the questions:

1. What is lunch? ______________________________________________________________

2. How much time does lunch usually take? _________________________________________

3. What do British people have for lunch? __________________________________________

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4. Where do British businessmen have their lunch? ___________________________________

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Task 4. Find in the text the words meaning the names of food. Translate these words.

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Dinner

Dinner is the biggest meal of a day. In a great many English homes people make the midday meal the chief one of the day, and in the evening they have much slimmer dinner – an

omelet or sausages, bacon and eggs, bread and cheese, a cup of coffee or cocoa . The most important meal of the week is the Sunday dinner, which is usually eaten at 1 p.m. The traditional Sunday dish used to be roast beef, but nowadays pork, chicken or lamb are more common.

Task 5. Find in the text and read the next word expressions:

еда в полдень ______________________

во многих английских семьях _____________________________

более легкий обед ______________________________

яичница с беконом _____________________________

чашка кофе или какао _________________________________

традиционное воскресное блюдо ____________________________________

Task 6. Answer the question:

What is the difference between dinner in Britain and in Russia?

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Eleven o’clock tea

11o’clock tea could be hardly called a meal but it is a sociable sort of thing as friends often come in then for a chat while they have their cup of tea with cake or biscuit. It’s also called “high tea”. They have strong tea with plenty of bread and butter, ham or tongue, tomatoes or salad, then stewed fruit and a good cake. And that’s what an Englishman calls a good tea.