Look East!

[aw ditor]

Local BBC Regional TV for the eastern fringes running a series of RAF 90th Birthday celebratory items each evening this week. Lunch time taster' was good!

[spectre150]

I am glad your lunch tasted good. What did you have?:E

Go on, give us a clue - or is it a secret?:p

[airborne_artist]

Spectre:

Here's what I had in my favourite sea-side pub this lunchtime:

http://bp0.blogger.com/_Z_Us2xEQ9t8/RfXSfo_PfVI/AAAAAAAAAwg/YCKxz1EnyKw/s400/dsc03226crabsalad1.JPG

[Melchett01]

A_A

Looks delicious ..... I notice there were no 'brown jobs' in it that might have otherwise spoilt it :E

[BEagle]

I wasn't sure whether it was rhubarb, lettuce and custard - or those god-awful 'crab sticks' chopped and mixed with lettuce and mayo....

Or that a Labrador had seen its lunch for a second time - going in the other direction.

Holiday Inn, Odlin Road, Bangor used to do an excellent (real) lobster Caesar salad. Very nice with a couple of buckets of crisp white wine....

..before getting down to a 'first night runaway', that is...:(

Happy Times!

[Beatriz Fontana]

If the Look East lunchtime taster was good, how was tea (or dinner if you're southern)?

[aw ditor]

BF'

It (was) repeated.

[Whirlygig]

Beatriz, rest assured, it is "tea"; "dinner" is for the pretentious "nouveau-riche". Any later in the evening, and the meal becomes "supper".

Cheers

Whirls

[StopStart]

Notwithstanding comrade Whirls' comments above..... :)

Lunch is taken around midday. Tea is just that - some tea. Perhaps with some toast if you're lucky. Dinner is the main meal of the evening and supper is a light meal taken late at night - should you still be hungry after all that.

Your evening meal is called Tea only if you have to wash coal grime off your hands prior to eating it. Lunch is called Dinner only if your finishing school was bombed and you were subsequently raised by wolves.

What was the question?

:ok:

[Beatriz Fontana]

Long live the north-south divide! Dinner is at 12 or 1pm, tea is at 6. Supper is around 9pm (involving on a Friday, fish and chips!)

Can highly recommend Stuart Maconie's book "Pies and Prejudice" in which he tries to explain the dinner / supper thing.

[Melchett01]

StopStart,

In that case, I'm either a northern monkey, or I was raised by a bunch of coal mining wolves.

Incidentally, weren't finishing schools for posh birds and nonces??? Oh sorry, that's the northern monkey making a bid for freedom again :}

Beatriz .... hear hear!

[Whirlygig]

Well, there were coal fields in Kent - and you can't get much more "south" than that!!

I'm a breakfast, lunch, tea, supper person with "dinner" being reserved for formal occasions and I was born in Surrey!!!

Cheers

Whirls

[Whirlygig]

Cornwall doesn't count; they just have "meals".

... I did say "much more"; on the scale of the British Isles, there ain't much in it.

Besides, I did all my domestic chores hours ago!

Cheers

Whirls

[xiphias]

It's lunch and then dinner in the evening. Definitely. Anyone who thinks differently should write 6 A4 sides of "Margaret Thatcher was the best prime minister ever" as punishment. :E

[StopStart]

Dreadful. Once again we see the dangers inherent in commissioning the working classes.....

[BEagle]

Quite so, Stoppers! Damn peasants!

Breakfast is the first meal of the day. Kippers, kedgeree, bacon and egg - that sort of thing.

Luncheon is taken at around 1300. Lobster salad and some crisp white wine, for example.

Tea is a pot of Earl Grey, plus some thinly sliced bread with gentleman's relish and cucumber slices, or perhaps the odd crumpet. Taken at around 1600.

Dinner is one's evening meal, taken not before 1900. Normally 3 courses, followed by coffee and brandy.

But for the Untermensch of the lower class, or from clog and whippet land:

Breakfast is a bowl of gruel, together with khaki coloured tea which has been "mashed on 't hob overnight". Taken before "going down 't pit" at 0600.

Dinner, tha' knows, is probably a slice of pig pancreas pie or sheep testicle tart, taken at 1200. "Down 't pit", of course.

Tea, by 'eck, is some "bread and drippin' " served by " 't missus" immediately after return from 't pit and often before taking off 't hobnailed boots. At around 1700. Followed by a soak in a zinc bath in front of 't grate, then "off down to 't pub" for 10-11 pints of ale. Sithee.

Supper is more pig pancreas pie, taken after rolling back from 't pub at 2300 and "givin' the missus a good beltin' ". On high days, holidays and "wakes weeks", this is followed by a vile ceremony termed "givin' the missus a good seein'-to". Which is when these lower orders commence the process of adding more of their odious spawn to the world.

[27mm]

That's nothin' tha knows - I remember drinkin' tea from rolled up newspaper while livin' in hole in t'road....

[50+Ray]

Nice one Beags! Difficult to see the screen through tears of laughter. Brightened up an idle morning watching the sand blow by.
Ray

[threeputt]

THREAD DRIFT!

3P:ok:

[Mr C Hinecap]

Any chap who wasn't dragged up with ideas above his station would never, ever spread gentlemans relish on bread. He would know it is for hot toast only. Bread and cucumber indeed.

The finest ever description of breakfast came from Mr Combine, a gentleman of this parish - who pointed me at this description on another site:



1. Wake up in a Georgian country house with a hangover of biblical proportions. Slide your arm from beneath the slender alabaster neck of the recumbent debutante and silently pick your way through the detritus of last night's party to the kitchen.

2. As soft golden sunlight arcs low across the paddock and gilds the chromework of the Aga like melted butter, find a big pan.

3. Heat an unconscionable quantity of oil to a gentle simmer and slip in the freshly made local sausages. Sausages should not be pricked and never fried. The intention is that they should poach in the oil.

4. As the sausages poach make tea. If it is a proper farmhouse there will be a gigantic 'Brown Betty' teapot of the type used to fortify British battalions throughout the last Great Unpleasantness. Add a spoonful of leaf tea (need we mention the sordid subject of bags?) for each person and 'one for the pot'. At this point the kettle will start its song, beginning the process of gently awakening the recovering partygoers. Pour the water over the leaves. The tea serves the same purpose to a hungover Englishman that chicken soup serves to a Jewish New Yorker with a headcold and hives. This is not cooking...it's an emergency clinical intervention. An Englishman's mother will offer him tea as first response medical aid even if his arm has been severed by a combine harvester.

5. Move the sausages to the warming oven, pour off all but a light glazing of the oil and begin to brown the bacon. Much has been written about good bacon and I do not propose to repeat it. Suffice it to say...smoked...streaky...thin...crisp. Place in the warming oven when done.

6. Open a can of Heinz baked beans -accept no substitute- these are not so much a foodstuff as an architectural element of the finished plate. Think of beans as colour and a concealer of disheartening flashes of empty plate between meats.

7. Mushrooms and tomatoes may be grilled at this stage but no gentleman would consider eating them. They are vegetables. Vegetables are a form of table decoration. They aren't food - they go next to food. As the great Dr Johnson should have said 'Vegetables are what food eats' and I have no intention of disagreeing.

8. Americans eat hash browns at breakfast. Theay are disagreeable to an Englishman. I understand that the French, who can make food out of almost anything, use them to sole espadrilles.

9. There are many different ways to cook eggs but most of them are purely of interest to invalids, children and the feeble-minded. The correct or 'proper English egg' is fried with lightly browned edges in the fat left over from the bacon. At the last minute, oil is flicked over the top of the yolk to seal it. This dangerous procedure causes the yolk to form a perfect, golden, viscid capsule, the violation of which with a rough shard of toast, is the nearest that an Englishman will permit himself to unbridled sexual ecstasy.

10. While the eggs are being coaxed into tumescence the first of the walking wounded will have arrived in the kitchen. Ignore the bashful looks and tousled hair and administer tea in large quantities. Mugs enable fingers to thaw and many a tryst has been sealed by a coy glance over the chipped china rim. The more robust may be set to the simple task of toast.

11. Working quickly, lay down toast, top with an egg, flank with bacon and sausage and fill the spaces with beans. Serve forth.

[Roland Pulfrew]

BEags

You're going to Hell for that one!! ;)

Mr Hinecup

Excellent! I had a good chuckle over that whilst trying to get on with some proper work.

Gentlemen, thank you for brightening my day.:D

[BEagle]

Baked beans? How deplorably common!

Whilst Patum Peperium is indeed delicious on hot toast during the winter, a little spread sparingly on granary bread with real butter and some thinly sliced cucumber is a very pleasant accompaniment to Earl Grey on summer afternoons. It keeps one going until 1800 when the pre-prandial Pimms' No.1 is sipped.

All of which is a complete mystery to 't peasants soaking in 't zinc tub washing off coal grime with carbolic soap after "us tea" before setting off in 't best clogs to go "down 't pub"...

Hash browns, by the way, are a poor American imitation of proper Swiss
Rösti.

Long live the South-North divide indeed. Hadrian had the right idea, but he built the wall in the wrong place. It should have been built from the Wash to the intersection of the Severn with Offa's Dyke!

[GPMG]

Having read Beagle's message regarding the naming of the 3 meals, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. I am heartened to realise that I am part of the group known as 'posh nobs darn sarf'.

Oi Oi......


I've just realised reading this, one of the things I really miss about the Corps. Waking up, getting showered and popping down for a full fry up bootneck style with stacks of red and brown sauce (cholestorel does exist when your 22 and mega fit). Then getting back to the grots and changing into phys kit before doing a 5-6 miler around Bickliegh's finest hills. Then another shower and on to weapons training or map reading etc and following a hearty lunch it was down into the vale for a round-robin of stances regarding field craft, sniping, ambush drills etc. Finish at 1600 and after another Dhobi it was time for evening scran and all pile onto the Bickliegh Bomber for beer, 'ladies' and a night up the street.

And they paid me money to do this!!
Why on earth did I leave?

[mystic_meg]

Pour the water over the leaves

...you forgot to warm the pot, you heathen..:rolleyes:

[exscribbler]

Nice one, Beags! Good to see you're in touch with your roots.:E

Strikes me that no-one's remembered the RN's old pipe: Hands to dinner, Officers to lunch...:}

Yes, I know I'm late but at my age a full heart-attack breakfast takes some getting over.

[Melchett01]

But you don't need to warm the pot if you stick a tea bag in a big mug complete with a dash of milk (wouldn't want it to be too weak) and a couple of sugars. Perfect to keep you going until you don the cloth cap and head off to the ale house for a lard pie.

That said, the thought of the alabaster-skinned debutante alluded to by Mr C might just be enough to make me buck me ideas up a bit. So how do you get yourself a 'deb' ..... send off enough tokens from the tea bag packet and see what turns up in the post?

[Solid Rust Twotter]

No blue steak with the breakfast bacon, sausage and eggs?

Philistines...:rolleyes:

[BEagle]

No blue steak with the breakfast bacon, sausage and eggs?


Good grief, no! That would be tantamount to accepting American culture, were that not such an obvious oxymoron.

Although it, however, be marginally less unacceptable to a gentleman than eating some clog dancers' delicacy of fried pig's blood, pork fat and oatmeal..... Known, one understands, as 'Black pudding'...:yuk:

[goudie]

Surely breakfast for manly sorts would include chitlins?

[Solid Rust Twotter]

Aaahhhh....

That explains the current location of the W-E Trophy.:E