In Britain most people have breakfast between 7:00 and 9:00, lunch between 12:00 and 1:30 p.m. and dinner anytime from about 6pm onwards.
Britain is a tea-drinking nation. Every day we drink 165 million cups of the stuff and each year around 144 thousand tons of tea is imported. It is very common to meet friends and colleagues for a cup of tea in English tearooms. In fact, if you are invited round to a friend's house in Britain, the first thing they will likely do is offer you a cup of tea! Tea is of a very high quality in Britain and is usually brewed strong and drunk with milk and sometimes sugar. Although, there is now also a growing popularity in Britain of green teas, white teas and fruit teas. If someone asks you if you ' would like a cuppa ' , they are asking if you would like a cup of tea. Most people around the world seem to think a typical English breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, fried bread, mushrooms and baked beans all washed down with a cup of tea. However this is rarely the case. A typical English breakfast is more likely to be a bowl of cereals, a slice of toast, orange juice and a cup of tea.
Britain is also well known for its ale, which tends to be darker in appearance than lager. Most ale in Britain is known as “Bitter”. You can go into any English pub and ask for a ‘pint of bitter'. British dishes include fish and chips, the Sunday roast, steak and kidney pie, and bangers and mash. The Sunday Roast is a traditional British main meal served on Sundays (usually in the early afternoon for lunch), consisting of roasted meat, roast potato together with accompaniments, such as Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, vegetables and gravy. Bangers and mash is a traditional English dish made of mashed potatoes and sausages.
More recently, many Anglo-Indian hybrid dishes have been created in England such as ‘chicken tikka masala' and ‘balti'. Curry is in fact more popular in Britain than fish and chips nowadays, and many of these curries are limited to Britain and cannot even be found in India. Even at home, it is quite common for people to cook their own English-style curries. However if you come to England be warned that the curry in England is often much spicier than in other European countries!
