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∂ leı d] – мармелад

buttered toast [‘bλ t∂ d’toust] –гренок; тост

for a change – для разнообразия

probably – вероятно

steak [steı k] – бифштекс

chief [t∫ ı: f] – главный

tin, can (Am.) – банка консервированных продуктов