“Meals in Great Britain”
darbą atliko:
11 b klasės mokinė
Violeta Vasilevičiūtė
1999
Kaunas
Meals and all mealtimes are not the same in all the families. Breakfast is the first meal of the day. Most people do not have a full breakfast as they are in a hurry to their work. The ones who eat much at breakfast say that it is fine. English writer Somerset Maugham gave the following advice: ‘If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts daily’.
At noon or a bit later, that is at one o’clock p.m., comes a meal which is lunch for some people. More than half of the population have a hot dinner (called lunch) in the middle of the day. The cool meal is eaten in the evening. Others have a light lunch at one, or a hot dinner in the evening. Lots of people work too far from their homes to be able to go home for a hot meal. So they have their meals in the offices, and children or teenagers – at schools or colleges. But on Sundays the family sit down together.
The next meal is tea with slices of bread and butter and cakes. Mother and children may have their tea together at five o’clock in the afternoon or they may wait a little for their father returning home from work.
The English custom of afternoon tea goes back to the late eighteenth century when Anne, wife of the 7 th Duke of Bedford, decided that she suffered from a sinking feeling having no health at around five o’clock in the afternoon. She needed tea and cakes to bring her strength and mood back.
Tea had come at last to every house and office. The Chinese were the first people to grow tea. They knew about it more than two thousand years ago. This wonderful drink came to Europe only three hundred years ago. The British first heard of tea in 1598, and tasted it in about 1650. For two centuries tea was imported from China. In 1823 a tea plant was found growing naturally in India. Sixteen years later the first eight chests with Indian tea leaves were sold to London. Nowadays London tea markets deal with tea from India, Ceylon and Africa more than from China.
Tea has played its part during the period of wars. When George III of England tried to make the American colonists pay import duty on tea, a group of Americans disguised as Red Indians and threw 342 chests of tea into the sea in Boston Harbour – the Boston Tea Party which led to the War of Independence.
The Duke of Wellington took some cups of tea before starting the Battle of Waterloo. In peace time the Victorian Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone (1868 – 1874) remarked: ‘If you are cold, tea will warm you, if you are heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you and if you are excited, it will calm you’.
Tea is not a meal at all. It is a suitable occasion to meet with friends, to have a short rest. People often come in for a chat over their cup of tea. There are two kinds of tea. They are: ‘afternoon tea’ which is drunk between three – thirty and consists of tea, bread, butter and jam, followed by some cakes and biscuits. The second is ‘high tea’. It is a substantial meal and is taken between five – thirty and six – thirty by families which do not usually have a late dinner. In a well-to-do family it will consist of some slices of ham or tongue. People take some tomatoes and salad with. They do not refuse to take a kipper or tinned salmon with strong tea, bread and butter. Some add to their tea stewed fruit or tinned pears, apricots or pine – apples with cream. Others them eat custard or cakes.
On the whole tea making is realy an art in Great Britain. The hostess first of all rinses the teapot with some boiling water before adding four or five teaspoons of tea. The amount of tea varies according to the number of people present. The hostess leaves the tea to draw for five minutes. They usually drink tea with some milk. It is very tasty. English people seldom put lemon or pour rum into their tea.
Information from ,,Kauno diena”