English Meals

By Roger Colins

We waste so much time eating. I'm British English, born and raised and we never bothered beyond a Sunday lunch, an occasional dinner or supper, to enjoy food.

There are some of us that do feed a family or make a hobby of it but overall I think we British accept food for what it is and enjoy it as par for the course.

Breaking one's fast is whatever the first meal of the day is. As far as I am concerned, breakfast should be a starving man's request granted.

The good ol' Full English breakfast is no myth. If we can, we eat it packing enough carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins, calories, sugars and caffeine to kick start two days worth of energy.


Afternoon

Lunch, is usually a little more civilised. A sandwich, a snack, but nothing more than a buffet of delights or single course that would never be stretched unless free for the rest of day. Beer, whiskey and wine are welcomed from here until breakfast the next day.

Lunch and can involve cases of wine, delicatessens and desserts but casually, moderation is observed. Hot or cold, small or large, luncheon is whatever we eat around the middle of the day, so long as it is the second meal of the day.


Tea time is always unexpected and expected. Buns, cakes and biscuits can be quite the welcome accompaniment to not only tea, but other coffee and drinks in the mid afternoon. Prelude to a supper or dinner, tea is however by no means necessary.


Evening

Dinner will usually involve a platter of meats and accompanied gravy, vegetables and respective staple carbohydrates with following optional dessert.

Formally, a starter may be requested but informally, it will not. Supper can be served as the same as the full course dinner though in smaller portions during the evening time. Suppers are more advisable for a single sitting where a dinner seats a group.

Either can be skipped but not both, even a supper will account for a brace of drumsticks, sandwich or a chicken salad even if regarded as a snack, however small. Both are by no means restricted to any one cuisine. We can have an Indian for lunch and a Chinese for supper but tea has to be fairly British.


Others

There is the mid night snack, usually simulating all other snacking options during the day. Can consist of various experimental cooking such as cakes, left overs, pies, chocolate and ice cream, essentially whatever may be have left to eat from the previous meals.


Drinks?

Throughout the entire process, drinking can be variably accounted for but so far as accompanying diets, beers, wines, spirits and fizzy drinks are fattening whereas wines and spirits are worse on the liver, depending on regularity of consumption for each.

On the whole, we are supposed to ingest five to six litres of new, liquid water, into our bodies every day including; beers, wines, coffee and tea although these do make one tend to pee more.


From an Englishman's perspective, most of the day is tiresome to think of when eating.

Not that we do not enjoy our company, we eat quick and fast to get what we need to get back to work whereas the rest of the world, take time to enjoy these finer things in life. An Englishman would still see it as a waste of time but still, he saves his Sunday to quieten himself around food.

#British #food #culture