Reading Skills

Read the following text, retell it in the name of a person who has been on a visit to England. Let the students ask you questions and make comments on the subject of English cuisine and meals.

An Englishman’s Meals

The usual meals in England are breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner or, in ordinary households, breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. Breakfast is generally a bigger meal than they have on the Continent.

In the morning an Englishman has his favourite breakfast of cornflakes with milk and sugar or porridge followed by fried bacon and eggs. A boiled egg is eaten with a small spoon with some salt. With it he will have either bread and butter or toast and butter. Some marmalade might be spread on the toast and butter. Perhaps some fruit will also be eaten. For a change you can have cold ham, or perhaps fish, some coffee and a roll.

But whether he in fact gets such a meal depends on the state of his housekeeping budget.

Breakfast is often a quick meal, because the father of the family has to get away to his work, the children have to go to school, and the mother has her housework to do.

At midday people have their meals at home. Those who live alone or who cannot get home during the day from their work sometimes have meals in restaurants. Factory workers usually eat in their canteens.

The main meal of the day is called dinner. Dinner is eaten either in the middle of the day or in the evening. If it is eaten in the evening (about 7 o’clock), the midday meal is called lunch (about one o’clock). If dinner is in the middle of the day, the evening meal is called supper.

The usual midday meal consists of two courses – a meat course accompanied by plenty of vegetables. After it comes sweet pudding or some stewed fruit.

Most Englishmen like what they call good plain food. Usually they have beefsteaks, chops, roast beef and fried fish and chips.

They are not overfond of soup, remarking that it fills them without leaving sufficient room for the more important meat course.

You can hardly call afternoon tea a meal. This may mean a cup of tea and a cake taken in the sitting-room or at work. For the leisured classes it is a social occasion when people often come in for a chat over their cup of tea. But some people like to have the so-called “high tea” which is quite a substantial meal. They have it between five and six o’clock. In a well-to-do family it will consist of ham, tongue and tomatoes and salad, or kipper, or tinned salmon, or sausage, with strong tea, bread and butter, then stewed fruit, or a tin of pears, apricot or pineapple with cream and custard, and pastries or a bun.

The evening meal, as we have said already, goes under various names: tea, “high tea”, dinner or supper depending upon its size and also the social standing of those eating it.

In some English homes the midday meal is the chief one of the day while in the evening they have a much simpler supper – an omelette, or sausages, sometimes bacon and eggs, or whatever they can afford.

Ask all possible questions on the underlined sentences in the text.

Develop your scanning habits. Read and mark in memory the information to search about: