Text 2 british meals

Read the text and say what is the difference between English and Ukrainian eating traditions.

The usual meals are breakfast, lunch tea and supper. Breakfast is generally a bigger meal than you have on the Continent, though some English people like a “continental” breakfast of rolls and butter and coffee. But the usual English breakfast is porridge or “Corn Flakes” with milk or cream and sugar, bacon and eggs, marmalade (made from oranges) with buttered toast, and tea or coffee. For a change you can have a boiled egg, cold harm, or perhaps fish.

We generally have lunch about one o’clock. The businessman in London usually finds it impossible to come home for lunch, and so he goes to a cafe or restaurant; but if I am making lunch at home I have cold meat (left over probably from yesterday’s dinner), potatoes, salad and pickers, with a pudding or fruit to follow. Sometimes we have a mutton chop, or steak and chips, followed by biscuits and cheese, and some people like a glass of light beer with lunch.

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

In some houses dinner is the biggest meal of the day. We had rather a special one last night, as we had an important visitor from South America to see Mr.Priestley. We began with soup, followed by fish, roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables, a sweet, fruit and nuts. Then we went into sitting-room for coffee and cigarettes.

But in my house, as in a great many English homes, we make the midday meal the chief one of the day, and in the evening we have the 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.

But uncle Albert always has “high tea”. He says he has no use for these “afternoon teas” where you try to hold a cup of tea in one hand and a piece of bread and butter about as thin as a sheet of paper in the other. He’s a Lancashire man, and nearly everyone in Lancashire likes high tea. They have it between five and six o’clock, and they have ham or tongue and tomatoes and salad, or sausages, with good strong tea, plenty of bread and butter, then stewed fruit, or a tin of pears, apricots or pineapple with cream or custard and pastries or a good cake. And That’s what they call a good tea.

(from C.E.Eckersley)

Word List:

corn flakes – овсяные хлопья

marmalade [‘ma:m∂leıd] – мармелад

buttered toast [‘bλt∂d’toust] –гренок; тост

for a change – для разнообразия

probably – вероятно

steak [steık] – бифштекс

chief [t∫ı:f] – главный

Tin, can (Am.) – банка консервированных продуктов Text 3 meals in britain

Read the text, learn new words and say what you think about English cuisine.

The English say that in their country the variety of food from meal to meal is probably greater than anywhere else in the world. They say that you can never confuse a breakfast with dinner, for example, and that in many other countries you eat exactly the same kind of dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At the same for the gourmet, “Ukrainian food is of extremely good quality, and it really tastes of something – unlike American food, for instance, which all tastes the same”, says an English television’s famous cook who has visited this country. He praises the Ukrainian national dishes, for example, “Ukrainian bortsch” with “smetana” looks good and tastes good.

You can have your meals at home, in a restaurant or a cafe, in the canteen of your factory or office. Those who stay at rest-homes or sanatoria have meals in the dining-hall, which is generally placed in a separate building, usually a cottage with kitchen premises. While travelling by train you can have breakfast, lunch or dinner in the dining-car as well cooked and served as if you were in a first-class hotel, or at the railway station when you are on the point of fainting from hunger you hurry to the refreshment room before the train starts. Travelling by ship your dinner or supper may be served in the dining-saloon.

In case you are up to the eyes in work and can’t go to the canteen but are hungry and want to have a bite you may drop into a self-service restaurant or “cafeteria” as Americans call a restaurant at which patrons serve themselves at a counter, taking their food to tables to eat.

Nowadays many self-service canteens, restaurant and cafe are being opened throughout the country. When employees or workers have a short break for dinner or lunch they find it impossible to get home for this meal and so they take it in a self-service cafe or restaurant. There are cafes and restaurants to suit every taste and purse.

In Britain you can find table d’hôte and a la carte dinners in every restaurant. Table d’hôte dinners are cheaper are cheaper then a la carte ones. When you dine a la carte you order course by course, as you desire. But a table d’hôte dinner consists of several courses, a choice is limited, and it is served in a canteen or a restaurant at a fixed price.

Word List:

to confuse– смешать, перепутать

gourmet [‘gu∂meı] – гурман

for instance – например

cook – повар

Ukrainian bortsch – украинский борщ

to taste good – иметь хороший вкус

canteen [kæn’ti:n] – столовая

separate [‘seprit] – отдельный, раздельный

cottage [‘kotidз] – коттедж, домик

a kitchen premise [‘premis] – с прилегающей кухней

dining-car – вагон-ресторан

to drop into – заглянуть, зайти на минутку

a self-service restaurant – ресторан самообслуживания

a counter [‘kaunt∂ ] – прилавок

to suit every taste and purse [p∂:s] – подходить, быть по карману

table d’hôte [‘teibl’do:t] – комплексный обед

a la carte [a: la:‘ka:t] – порционные блюда

a choice [‘t∫ois] – выбор

to be limited – быть ограниченным, лимитированным

Text 4 English Tea.

Read the text and answer the questions

The English know how to make tea and what it does for you. Seven cups of it wake you up in the morning; nine cups will put you to sleep at night. If you are hot, tea will cool you off, and if you are cold it will warm you up. If you take it in the middle if the morning, it will stimulate you for further work; if you drink it in the afternoon, it will relax you for further thought. Then, of course, you should drink lots of it in off-hours. In England they say jokingly: ‘The test of good tea is simple. If a spoon sands up in it, then it is strong enough; if the spoon starts to wobble, it is a feeble makeshift’.

It will probably surprise you to learn that the mistress of the house in England offers her visitors a cup of tea, she sometimes asks: “Russian or English tea?” By “Russian tea” the English mean tea with a slice of lemon in it. “English tea” means very strong tea with milk in it.

Tea-drinking is quite a tradition with the English. Tea is served in almost every house at about the same time – 5 o’clock in the afternoon.

a fixed price – устойчивая цена, установленная цена

Comprehension check

• What is the difference between English tea and Russian tea?

• Do you know how to make tea?

• Can you describe the procedure?

Text 6 American Food

Read the text and say the difference in American eating traditions/food and the British ones.

Fast food restaurants like McDonald’s an American export but other countries also have fast food. For example, in the Far East, open-air food stalls serve hot food quickly and cheaply. In Britain however, these open-air food stalls of the orient became the Chines, which you can find in many of the cities, towns and villages of the Britain. Takeaways sell hot food you carry out to eat in another place.

However, the most famous British takeaway is still the fish and chip shop. Wimpy is a trademark for the fast food chain in Britain. J Wellington Wimpy was a friend of the cartoon character Popeye who loved hamburgers. Britain’s appetite for convenience foods is growing. Instead of meals people eat crisps, snacks, nuts and cereal bars.

America has two strong advantages when it comes to food: the first is that as the leading agricultural 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 its champions, as do hickory-smoked or sugar-cured hams, turkey (which some people wanted to make the national bird), 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 have money, from the days when most Americans were farmers. They also help to keep fresh food on the table. Vegetable gardens are so popular that even The New Yorker always prints a few zucchini cartoons each autumn. One thing that always grows is zucchini, and trying to get the family to eat more of it with everything, or the neighbours to accept just a few more, has become a kind of national joke. In some areas where just about everyone goes fishing now and then, fish replace zucchini (“you caught them, you eat them!”). the first few fresh perch or mountain trout are quite good …

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 United States. A toasted bagel for breakfast (with Philadelphia cream cheese), a crisp taco with fresh lettuce (and a sharp cheese) for lunch, or a serious dinner starting with sweet-and-sour in a Chinatown restaurant have also become “typically” American.

There seem to be four trends in America at present which are connected with foods and dinning. 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 too expensive. Another reason, probably more important, is that many American women today do not feel that their lives are the 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, there 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 numbers of stores that specialize in often exotic cooking devices and spices.

A third trend is that as a result of nation-wide health campaigns, Americans in general are eating a much lighter diet. Cereals and grain foods, fruits and vegetables, fish and salads are emphasized instead of heavy and sweet foods. More than one American, of course, will refuse to give up that “solid” meal, potatoes, and gravy. Yet strong health and fitness movement in the U.S. shows no signs of being a temporary trend.