Perhaps our British members will clarify the following for me.
I'm currently reading all the Mrs. Bradley mysteries by Gladys Mitchell. In those her characters are constantly sitting down to eat every two to three hours. Here's the list:
Breakfast
Elevensies (is this the same as a Hobbits Second Breakfast?)
Lunch
Tea
Supper
(And there might be more crammed in there that I have forgotten.)
What is traditionally eaten at these? What time range for Tea? Sometimes Tea seems to be substantial and other times a snack?
All these seem to be washed down with many Imperial Gallons of tea, also many pints of bitter, sherry or whiskey, plus much tramping about on the moors, rural lanes and commons.
Any light you can provide would be much appreciated.
Aside: I like this part, any time somebody has had a shock they are immediately given a stiff drink of brandy, which seems to me a most noble and civilized practice!
Quoteany time somebody has had a shock they are immediately given a stiff drink of brandy,
Brandy, or if you are unlucky... sweet tea old boy.
Dinner, another one you missed. Tea can be just tea, or Afternoon Tea.
Sherry is over rated.
Elvensies... I like that.. it would be hobbit based.
I can only speak for a corner of Ashbourne, as I suspect it is very different elsewhere but:
Breakfast.. bacon, egg, sausage, tomato, beans mushrooms, black pudding, toast etc.
Elevensies is much less serious.. a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Brunch... a combination of breakfast and lunch.
Lunch... well, brunch but without breakfast. could be a full meal,, or a sandwich
Afternoon tea.... Tea and cake
Tea... the childrens meal
Dinner... the adults meal.
Supper is a light meal at bed time.
I think thats all. Any clearer?
That's a lot of eating! My first thought was "How are we fatter than them?"
But seriously, how many meals do you eat on a typical day?
only 2 or 3 :)
They just get called different things depending on where in the country you are, and the time you are eating.
Afterall, lifes biggest obsessions are generally Shelter, food then sex aren't they?
so in the UK, we talk about houses, food and weather. Just look at our TV..
"Location location location" and all the other housing filler.
"Great British Bake off."
and we get the weather every hour.
Sex is something the Scandinavians do .... so I hear :)
> pudding
This deserves a whole separate thread, I'm thinking.
> fatter
I think we Americans eat fewer meals of much bigger quantities and we drive everywhere instead of walking about all those moors the Brits have handily scattered about the place for that purpose.
Still, that is a lot of meals!
Mitchell wrote some 60 Mrs. Bradley mysteries from the 30's to the late 70's or 80's. She touches upon the strict food rationing during the War, and of course nearly everyone smokes either pipes or cigarettes. I'm up to the books written in the early 1960's which I remember as a child with smokey rooms when my parents had cocktail parties and everyone seemed to smoke.
I'm very keen on the brandy thing and tweed suits to make a comeback. Oh, I feel a shock coming on...
Breakfast: Porridge followed by a full English. Two mugs of tea
Elevenses: Couple of sweet pastries. Pot of tea
Brunch: Continental style - croissants, cheeses, meats. Coffee just to feel a bit European
Lunch: Anything goes. Usually a minimum of three courses. Pot of tea
Afternoon tea: Cucumber sandwiches (crusts off) a selection of cakes. Pot of tea
High tea: Light meal to see you through to dinner. More Tea
Dinner: 3-6 courses served in the drawing room. Wine and port
Supper: A lighter less formal meal to see you through the night
If I space out my snacks well enough that usually gets me through the day.
you're forgetting that thing with no name which happens at 3pm (too early for tea, too late for lunch) when you need a reveving *something* to counter dropping sugar levels.
Brad, very generally, for many older people dinner is the main meal served at teatime, while for many more northern counties dinner is what you have at lunchtime and tea is served at dinner time. Supper is a bit of a non standard meal which may simply be a late dinner, or an extra meal eatcn by those who had tea at teatime and therefore have had four or five hours between that and bedtime but were too full up for a proper dinner.
And different rules apply on Sundays.
Speaking as a Scot who's lived in London since the age of 6 - the English eat far too much.
Especially 'middle-england', the opposite of the mid-west in the US, who used to eat very little (Georgetown was the example in my history books).
But these days everyone in the West eats too much.
Again, speaking as a Scot, Scotland is the test territory for British sweets.
First they hammered us with their muskets, now they drench us in sugar - there is no win !
btw i'm basically a Londoner with a Scots anti-authoritarian attitude so probz best not to listen to me ;+}
Quote from: Gurtie on October 16, 2014, 06:51:34 PM
you're forgetting that thing with no name which happens at 3pm (too early for tea, too late for lunch) when you need a reveving *something* to counter dropping sugar levels.
Brad, very generally, for many older people dinner is the main meal served at teatime, while for many more northern counties dinner is what you have at lunchtime and tea is served at dinner time. Supper is a bit of a non standard meal which may simply be a late dinner, or an extra meal eatcn by those who had tea at teatime and therefore have had four or five hours between that and bedtime but were too full up for a proper dinner.
And different rules apply on Sundays.
I did mostly base that feeding schedule on a visit to yours (except tea was beer)
I am in awe. You realize, that if a bureaucrat from the EU saw this thread they would want to regulate all this so it was standardized!
So what is the best tea to have at these different meals? (I really like Yorkshire Gold, which was recommended on the old Threadwatch.)
QuoteSo what is the best tea to have at these different meals?
.......Jason are you here?
I can discuss bacon, but not tea...
"tea" is something I only had as a kid. And only on Saturday's or Sunday's if we'd had a big lunch (i.e. dinner at lunchtime)
"supper" is a word my posh Scottish aunt used once and we never understood.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner = the standard
Brunch = happy days
All else is frills adopted regionally or historically
as for the tea you drink...Get that can of worms well and truely open
happily drinking a cup of Twinings Everyday tea right now. But equally happy with a Yorkshire tea.
> tea
Assam all the way.
Just for a point of reference, here in the US:
Breakfast - morning meal
Lunch - noon(ish) meal
Dinner - evening meal
Most people do not have brunch on a regular basis, but it seems to be a Sunday thing.
Supper is pretty much interchangeable with the term Dinner.
I have a Keurig machine and use a lot of Twinings English Breakfast tea k-cups. (I can see you all shuddering.)
Yorkshire Gold I have to order tea bags from Amazon and it's pricey. My hot tea consumption goes up in the winter time, helps keep me warm.
Yorkshire gold is so horrible I let them know about it.
https://twitter.com/JasonD/status/519218596799868928
There are generally 3 meals eaten by most Brits. I call them, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner but...... do appreciate different parts of Blighty call them different things (and as Gurtie said, it's all different on Sundays)
Tea time is all the time though - preferably loose tea and in a pot.
I like tea that you can taste the leaves in and that hasn't had colour or flavouring added.
Red Bush for me.
Hmm after Rooftop's post I'm confused (ok that's a bit early in the thread to get confused).
The thing that continental ladies, getting together around 4pm and drinking tea and stuffing themselves with scones and crumpets and cucu sammies and whathaveyou: is that supposed to be HIGH Tea or AFTERNOON Tea? Or is it a mix? Or none of the above?
I've heard from some semi-Northerners that High Tea is actually the equivalent of dinner, and that Afternoon Tea can be poshed-up in the way I described earlier. But now I'm not so sure...
That would be Afternoon Tea.
I think High Tea involves some six-shooters in a corral.
The expressions of all these meal times are from Victorian times and bear no real resemblance to real life, any more than I imagine American's trekking across the plains in a convoy of wagons :)
Quote from: gm66 on October 21, 2014, 02:19:26 PM
I think High Tea involves some six-shooters in a corral.
Umm that's "high noon" isn't it?
Please don't confuse us (foreigners) any further than we already are :)
So it's those in the north of Britian that eat and drink tea about every two waking hours? I think this gives them something to do.
We all drink tea in copious amounts, unless you are a beard laden wanna hipster from Shoreditch. If you are it's then a unique blend of coffee with a name so long it takes 5 minutes to order and the taste doesn't matter but "the experience" does!
answered in pix
http://imgur.com/a/Vaymq
That was not put together by a Brit...
Roast beef with no roasties, yorkshire puddings, or if I am not mistaken, Horseradish sauce.
And breakfast without bacon? Unthinkable.