Meals. An Englishman’s meals. Eating traditions in English – speaking countries and in Russia. What is your favourite cuisine? What cuisine dishes do you prefer?

24. Meals. An Englishman’s meals. Eating traditions in English – speaking countries and in Russia. What is your favourite cuisine? What cuisine dishes do you prefer?

   Every country has its own eating habits. Two things confuse foreigners when they come to Britain: cricket and British meals. But every visitor can live without understanding cricket, it’s almost impossible to survive without understanding British eating habits. Over the centuries the British have shown a tendency to name and renamed their meals and to move them about the day. Further to confuse foreigners the British give different names to each meal depending on social class and part of the country people live in.

   Traditionally the British have 3 meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. The legendary British breakfast is a hearty meal and the perfect start to a hard working day. It is served in the morning and consists of bacon, eggs, tomato, fried bread and a variety of sausages. It’s usually finished off with slices of toast spread with orange marmalade and a cup of tea with milk or lemon. However, there is a lot of fat in this kind of breakfast and today many people eat a healthier one. They prefer to start their day with muesli or bran with nuts and raisins, honey, yoghurt and fruit juice. This breakfast is healthier because muesli and fruit juice contain less fat and more fiber. Fiber is useful because it helps food to go faster through your body. This habit (to have such a breakfast) influences the Russian eating habits. By the way there is a difference between the English breakfast and the breakfast on the Continent. A “continental breakfast” is a breakfast which consists of a cup of tea or coffee with a toast. The English breakfast is more substantial.

   Lunch is a light meal. Lunch consists of fried fish, chops, liver or sausages, some kinds of vegetables, usually carrots, cabbage, potatoes, and rice. The sweet may consist of fruit or the famous homely pudding. Most people have no time to go back home for lunch so they eat at school, cafes, pubs or restaurants.

   The most substantial meal of a day is dinner, which is usually between 6 and 7 p.m. A typical evening meal is a meat dish with vegetables and dessert. The most popular drink with meals in Britain is tea. They have “a nice cup of tea” 5 or 7 times a day. Some people like to have the so-called “high tea” which is a mixture of tea and supper, for example, meat cheese and fruit may be added to bread and butter, pastries and tea.

   If you want to eat out in a restaurant in Britain, there are many restaurants to choose. You can find cheap, tasty meals at “fish and chips” shops or in pubs, “Fast food” restaurants where you can eat hamburgers and chips, are very popular with families and young people. The traditional English dishes are roast turkey, pudding, and of course the legendary English porridge. Everybody knows the expression “Your porridge, sir”.

   As for the Russian eating habits, I’d like to tell about the most popular dish, borshch. It contains about 20 ingredients. It may be cooked with beef, chicken, pork, beans and mushrooms. Borshch is served as the main course with bread. The proud of the Russian is wheat bread, sweet-smelling and light. One of the main dishes of the traditional menu are pancakes and pelmeni (boiled pastries with meat filling) served with mustard, butter, vinegar or sour creem. As for me I like varenyky, a type of boiled dumplings with various fillings (cherries, strawberries, curd, potatoes). Perhaps the greatest Russian love is tea. It’s drunk without milk and is served with home-made jam, so-called varienye, baranki (circles of dry pastry) and pirozki (baked pastry with some filling). Russian-style tea is a special ceremony when people sit around the table with a samovar (tea-urn) placed in the middle and drink hot strong tea with a slice of lemon.

   I like cooking. My favorite dish is shchi.  There are not many people who can cook it but my grandmother taught me. I usually cut a lot of cabbage into thin slices, pour into the pan some water in which cabbage have been boiled for a long time. Then I add some water; put potatoes cut into thin slices. Then I add some salt, pepper and onions. Shchi is ready to pour out. It’s finger-linking good.

That’s nearly all what I wanted to tell you about meals.