Just wondering what was usually eaten for lunch, dinner and breakfast in England. And it would be great if you could tell about some famous fashion designers there as well.
Someone once said that in Hell cooks are English. He was right. You can google "English cuisine" and you will find a wealth of information on what you are asking about. Similarly google "english fashion designers" and you will find out about that as well.
I didn't mean to be offensive, it is just that from all the countries i have traveled to (about 22 or 23), English cuisine along with Dutch cuisine impressed me in a bad way, so i guess i still feel bitter somewhat about it.
English cooking get's a really bad reputation. It's bullied a lot, and it's picked on alot, and it's really sad this is the case. The English don't have a lot to smile about. Our cooking skills are appalling, we have no taste in buds apparently, if spotted dick is a national dish.
What era are you interested in? For most of the 20th century; dinner (noon, working class) - meat and two veg. followed by a rice pudding or a hot pudding and custard, Lunch (6pm approx. upper class) - a five course meal = appetizer, soup or fish course, main course, dessert, coffee and biscuits or cheese board and biscuits. Breakfast (full English breakfast)- Orange juice and breakfast cereal, and you can take your choice of five or more items from the following = bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding, fried bread, hash browns, mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoe scone, toast. High Tea - hot savoury food followed by fancy cakes and fresh cream and jam filled scones and don't forget a pot of freshly brewed hot tea. During the WW11 and the post war years food was rationed and housewives had to be inventive and do the best they could with limited meat, eggs, sugar and dairy produce - vegetables were plentiful. If you're talking this 21st century - anything goes.
Breakfast: Toast, probably with jam or peanut butter or marmalade. If it's a weekend maybe egg on toast or beans on toast. Some people eat cereal - cornflakes, rice krispies, cheerios. The Americans seem to eat a lot of colourful cereal but it Britain it's very plain. Morning snack: Fruit, cereal bar, crisps Lunch: Sandwich (if homemade cheese or ham, if shop bought the really exotic crayfish and lettuce!!!) Dinner (or supper): Lots of pasta, rice, curry, casserole, meat and two veg, potatoes etc. Whatever you do, do not get your English character to eat Meatloaf. Nobody English anyway has any idea what that is.
If you were dining out at greasy-spoon establishments - then I would agree, but if you go to a half decent restaurant that uses top quality British produce then you 'canny whack it!' British beef, lamb, pork and fresh fish and sea food takes some beating, but there is a true saying 'You only get what you pay for.'
Modern day: Breakfast - cereal + milk, or toast + jam, or nothing - know plenty of people who skip it. Full English Breakfast (as described above) is an ideal but not something most have very often (I like it as a treat if I'm staying in a hotel). Lunch - sandwiches are a really common option; last couple of workplaces i've been in people tend to treat themselves to fast food (McD's / BK / KFC or similar) one day a week. Jacket potato with some kind of topping (e.g. beans and cheese) is common too. Evening - judging from people's shopping baskets, stuff freshly cooked at home is less common people are lazy. Burger and chips. Pasta meals. Pizza. Junk - people are bad. High Tea, mentioned above, is probably confined to Scotland and the North of England. "Sunday roast" is traditional - maybe evening but more likely lunchtime with family. Roast beef, yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, a couple of vegetables - is the most common choice. Fish 'n' chips is very british, especially on the coast - seems most common as a Friday night thing. (A lot of people see Friday night as takeaway night). Most common biscuit: Custard Creams. The most common option for eating out is probably Indian food.
Peanut butter? Sounds very american to me! (Though I do know some fellow-brits who are in to it, they're living in Spain). I prefer honey on my toast.
Oh come on now, tut tut. Where is your sense of national pride? (It's part of the national ethos in the UK for us to be self deprecating. My wonderful adopted Uncle Stephen Fry (I've adopted him, he hasn't adopted me!!!) puts it quite nicely ina video clip I saw on You Tube. American Humour is from the point of view of the guy taking the piss out of something/someone/somesituation. British humour is the guy having the piss taken out of him, he's the fall guy, the failure, the punchline.) In the north/midlands, it's generally Breakfast, Dinner and Tea. Dahn Saaf it's usually Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Breakfasts vary from a bowl of cereal and milk to something on toast (jam or melted cheese etc) to a full on English Breakfast (I will hunt down and kill anyone who criticises the full english!) which includes Bacon, Tomato, Sausage, Hash Brown, mushrooms, fried bread, baked beans, egg (in a variety of forms) and just about anything else that takes a persons fancy. It is the best hangover cure bar none! Dinners are usually the bland bit, most Brits tend to rush lunch and end up having sandwiches with tasteless sliced meats and a bit of condiment on them. I try to avoid that but don't always manage. Tea can be anything, we like italian, chinese, thai, spanish, american, german, scandinavian and african cuisines to name but a few. Good old english meals like sheperds pie or a good old stew are excellent meals when executed well. IMHO the reputation of blandness comes from the apathy that tends to creep into British food joints. I've seen it so many times when a restaurant first opens and it's food is absolutely to die for...then over time the standards slip and the quality drops and then it gets bought out by someone and the process starts all over again. Unfortunately, this is something that is invisible to the potential punter until it's too late. Having said that, there are some restaurants near me that have never put a foot wrong and consistently maintain high standards. I /doff hat to them. For the home cook in this country, I have to say it's just laziness. The ubiquity of processed ready meals and our willingness as a nation to settle for them is a constant source of sorrow to me. I love food, I love cooking, I enjoy getting it wrong! I make my own bread, it's not difficult. I go on cookery courses and learn new things, that's fun. It's all too easy to just slap a Findus Horse Lasagne in the microwave so you can go back to watching Corrie or Enders. Also: Bacon. You Americans murder it. You cook it until its almost burnt to a crisp and then eat it as a side with pancakes. It's verging on criminal. F**k streaky bacon, try grilling (broiling) some tasty rindless middle until the fat just starts to brown. MMMMMMMMMMM /rant
Great answers already, just wanted to comment that England unfortunately (IMHO) is a very classed society and the answers from working, middle and upper classes would likely be quite different for this question. I'm not a huge fashion follower (shame on me, as I want to photograph more fashion) - the first name that sprung to mind was Vivienne Westwood. The late Alexander McQueen is obviously very well known. The current head of the McQueen brand, Sarah Burton, designed Kate Middleton's wedding dress for her marriage to Prince William. Julien MacDonald is a fashion designer who appeared on the judging panel of "Britain's Next Top Model" (see the quality TV I watch!). Beyond that, I'm not the best person to answer - you'd do just as well to google.
Most of my favorite comfort food comes from British recipes.... However, you can keep mushy peas they are gross.
Breakfast: Eggs and Bacon, Lunch: Fish and chips, Dinner: Restaurant or whatever (heated wonders full of nothing). Yup, we eat weird things and most of the time run for other foreign cuisine restaurants when our stomachs are about to burst into tears.
I suppose most of my family and friends are upper middle class: breakfast is often porridge, always toast, sometimes muesli or fruit if into health. Tea is more common than coffee. coffee is drunk at coffee time (10.30-11.00) lunch, also called "dinner" especially by children, is usually at 13.00. Salad or vegetables and meat or fish. Maybe "pudding"--a sweet dish which is never known as "dessert". tea is at about 16.00. A slice of cake or scone with cream and usually china tea with no milk (but my family is from Devon, so I don't know if cream is eaten much in other places apart from Cornwall) sometimes there is "high tea" for children at about 17.30, which is mostly an extended version of above, but also boiled eggs and soldiers, maybe sausage rolls etc. supper is about 18.30-19.30 and there is often soup as well as a meat and vegetable dish. If the meal is formal, it is called "dinner" and tends tostart after drinks at about 19.30. English baking is wonderful, but I've noticed English people have gradually got more and more used to too much suger in everything over the years. Stews and pies are also good. The problem is, most people can't cook to save their lives and live out of tins or packets. There's also a lot of interest in Indian food.
Quick question .... my grandmother used to cook things rather different and I always wondered if it was just her or the British way of doing things. Even though she was born in NY her grandparents were from England and from what I can gather her parents kept English traditions. Anyway. I don't remember much because I was younger but she wasn't known for her cooking skills. I remember she used to boil meat - things like bacon and ground beef. She'd cook the crap out of the peas and lumpy mashed potatoes. Porridge for breakfast but only with milk and some brown sugar nothing fancy. Toast and marmalade, only marmalade. For Christmas eve instead of Turkey we'd have soda cracker encrusted oysters. Whipping cream never had any sugar in it. Whenever we were sick she'd make us Pink tea --- Orange Pekoe with lots of sugar and milk. My mom says she was a good cook when she wanted to be and a terrible cook the rest of the time. Probably because she'd rather Grandpa took her out for dinner instead of her cooking.
OK so I know bangers and mash, I know black pudding is blood pudding, which I've never eaten, I've heard of a spotted dick, but what is eggs and soldiers? Why are English dishes called such funny names like these and welsh rarebit (I know I probably spelled that wrong)?
This is eggs and soldiers. the soldiers could be anything that's made into sticks... sometimes even cake silices...
Food is often a bit overcooked although not so much now as the old days. How else can you eat porridge apart from cream/milk and sugar or golden syrup? *puzzled* "soldiers" are buttered toast in thin strips that you can dip in your soft boiled egg. Whipping cream neverhas sugar added to it! Strong tea usually has milk added (a habit left over from the Indian army days). You also mention designers: well, perhaps the British save their artistry for design because I would say British-trained fashion designers are the best and most sought-after in the world--Bruce Oldfield, Mary Quant, Hüseyin Çağlayan, Sarah Burton, Stella MacCarthy the list goes on (but I can't spell them all) as well as fabric designers like Laura Ashley etc. At least, I hope so because next year my daughter will (hopefully) be starting at Central St Martins and it will cost us an arm and a leg. Certainly, we looked at schools in Paris, and they all said "there's only St Martins or Westminster if you want to get a job anywhere".
You'll be surprised but British people don't really eat anything special for any of those meals (Maybe a fry up every now and then)...me personally, I just eat some cereal. (Popular cereals here are mostly Kellogg's brands...so check them out) For lunch, if I was out, I'd probably have McDonalds...and a sandwich from Tesco (Maybe look up what kind of sandwiches Tesco or Asda have) Dinner could be a variety of things... Britain is culturally diverse now (so it could be anything from any culture...but maybe look at cook books published in Britain such as books by Jamie Oliver. I know Sunday Roasts are common~) Hope that helped
Huh? Meatloaf? You mean the rock musician? They did 'eating meatloaf' in the Rocky Horror Picture show.
. For anyone that thinks English grub isn't up to par, well, sometimes it can leave a bit to be desired. Probably we don't complain enough. But things they are a-changing. And if you imagine that French food is any better... that can be gross. Yet now the French are latching on to English custard, gravy, Marmite, mince pies, pork pies, bacon, bread that keeps, and beef that's been hung. And British cheeses? They can't get enough - and the harder and bluer, the better. They're now tucking into traditional fish and chips and mushy peas! That's got to be good news.
That's not an English thing, if you travel around the world and look at dishes that have been around at least since the turn of century (19th to 20th, of course ) you'll find that almost every culture gives funny name to things they eat regularly. It's probably a comfort thing that has evolved over time, it's so much easer to get children to eat "heaven and hell" than "roasted blood and liver sausage". Here in Bavaria people used to eat stakes (as in burning witches), which is basically white bread soaked in milk, covered in sugared egg and baked in a pan, and rabbit ears (hollow triangular crullers with jagged edges). Around Cologne they sell you a "half chicken" and all you get is bread and cheese, perhaps with a few onion slices, and to make things even crazier, they call the Bavarian stakes "poor knights". If you like Chinese, then you'll probably have "swallowed a cloud" - that's what the Wan Tan in the soup name means. The most popular noodles in Swabia can be translated as muzzle bags, while a rather peculiar dish from Thuringia is called dead granny (something with blood sausage). Italians like Strozzapreti, which translates to "priest strangler"...
