Not to mention the absence of Lorne sausage and potato cakes.

I used to always have porridge for breakfast, with water, the way it's supposed to be made.

Litha

 

Is porridge somewhat like oatmeal?

 

Yeah, and very popular during winter. Although hot wheatabix are good too.

Litha

 

I have oatmeal every morning...along with two eggs and a couple pieces of toast.

What are some foods that the British are especially known for?

 

We have quite a few special dishes, but I don't know how widely known they are.

Toad in the hole - sausages cooked in batter.
Bread and butter pudding - bread, dried fruit and brown sugar.
Roast dinners - either chicken, beef, pork and lamb roasted. With potatoes, peas, carrots, gravy. Yorkshire puddings which are oven cooked batter cakes.

Cornish pasties - suet pastry filled with turnip, carrots, onions and pork.
Pork pies - suet pastry filled with processed pork with a jellied fat around the meat.
Dripping sandwiches - pork fat on bread (which taste horrible)
Pork scratchings - cooled pork rinds.

fruit crumbles
Scotch pies - spicy mutton filled pies (my favourite)
Stovies - a scottish stew
Black pudding - clotted pigs blood that's made into sausage.

Those are all I can think of on the fly.
Can you tell me what grits are, because I keep hearing about them.

Litha

p.s I'm no chef so forgive me if I've got some wrong.

 

And don't forget... FISH AND CHIPS!

 

Aye, how could you forget fish and chips!

In Scotland, thick stews that contain your 5 helpings or more of vegetables as well as meat are traditional.

There is also a good scotch broth. Thicker than cement, filled with barlay, whatever spare vegetables are lying around and a boiled bit of mutton.

There is of course a full Scottish breakfast. Which is I believe (and please tell em if I miss something out) fried egg, grilled or fried tomato, grilled or fried bacon, fried bread or fried potato scone, black pudding, baked beans, grilled link sausages or fried lorne sausage. This is a kind of truckers breakfast. Most road side places sell this quite cheaply, and have everything dripping fat and grease, including the baked beans somehow.

I have heard of the English Breakfast, but Im not sure what the difference is.

 

As far as i know the English Breakfast is pretty similar to that, but it can come in much smaller portions like just sausages, bacon, eggs and soda/potato bread. Then there's the full english with everything up there as well (but i don't think black pudding is quite as popular).

Also, i don't know about the sausages... i just know pork and beef. Nothing more.

 

ah mate! black pudding is MUNCH! (had 2 get some pikey talk in there somewhere) to be honest though, where Im from we may as well be american. we say candy, we say jerk, we say dude, we say how ya doing etc. although that might be because of all the american tv we watch down here.

 

And where exactly is that?

Something Im gonna have to jump into a cave of live kitchenware for is that i forgot to add Haggis to my list of foods. Its like the scottish food. Traditionally, its sheeps insides mixed with lard and oats and spices, minced then stuffed inside a sheeps stomach, then boiled for ages. Now-a-days its the sheeps awful minced with lard oats and spices stuffed into something resembling sausage skin, then par boiled, for sale in shops.

Something I have to add, is that there is only one type of haggis. Mutton haggis. I know of at least one company in the US that advertises things like venison haggis and a variety of "flavoured" haggis', like orange flavour and such like. These are completely american, and NOT Scottish.

 

deep fried mars bars! they rule supreme.

 

ok, they may be brittish, but I don't think they are traditional. they are kind of a modern invention.

 

A lot of us are the same here in Northern Ireland... well, not really all of us. Really just me and most of my friends - i say it's because of american sitcoms, cartoons and rock music.

 

Mordecai...im from just outside London, or according to my Nottingham friend 'darn Sarf' and Kane, yeah, where I live its practically pikey-ville we've got Swanley, Gravesend, Crayford and Dartford and they are full of chavs, who ruin the English Language. I Blame Friends and Scrubs for being so ridiculously addictive.

 

Another couple of thigns I jsut thoguht of. Food wise, oatcakes are about as Scottish as you get apart from porridge and whiskey.

Anotehr thing, is that in the British Aristocracy, there is no such thing as a Count. There is an Earl, which holds the same level of status as a Count, but the title Count is continental.

The wife of an Earl is a Countess, but I believe that either came after the creation of the title Count, or was the reason for the creation of the title Count. However, the title Earl was created well before the title Count.

Aparently the article on Wikipedia states that Count is a british title, this is wrong, and a reason you should never completely trust wikipedia, its people like you and me who put the information in it, and some people put things in that are wrong.

Continuing on the same track about the aristocracy. Mainly the only type of peer (that is what they are called) created now a days is a life peer. As in the title does not get passed onto the children. All life peers, are Barons or Baroness's.

The only hereditary peers are the ones related to the royal family, titles like Duke of Edinburgh and Duke of Windsor and such like. Every Prince and Princess has at least one other title, be it Lord, Lady, Baronet, Earl, Duke, Marquis, Marsgrave, Landsgrave or Viscount.

While the Queen does have the power to create a hereditary peerdom, she rarely does. The last recorded case where she did, was when she made Dennis Thatcher (Maggie's husband) a hereditary Lord.

 

I allways wondered if british people sleep in 4 poster beds or that is a Harry Potter fandom thing?
In the beginning it looked like a hp-fandom cliche to me when he was sleeping in 4 poster beds even when he was not in the dorm. But later I thought it would have been mentioned as a cliche and I never heard any complains. So how about it?

 

It's mainly a Harry Potter thing. some of the rich do sleep in four-poster beds (or those who pretend to be rich), but generally, four-poster beds are out-dated and unused. Notice how the Dursley house has normal beds, as does the Weasley house (I think).

 

Its an old-fashioned thing, I think some of the Public Schools that board pupils (for you americans, that means Private Schools) that are really old fashioned and traditional, have 4 posters.

Another traditional food in the area I live is boiled corned beef with peas mixed through it. Its a traditionan New Years food, though I have never actually had it.

 

Is it a british habit to allways include the name of the addressed person into the speech pattern or is it just in writing? Or is that a sign of bad writing alltogether.

here's an example:

"What do you need that book for, Harry?"
"I want to study the dark arts, Hermione."
"But, Harry, You can't study the dark arts!"
"Oh yes, Hermione, I sure can."

 

No it's not a British habit. It could be the author trying to make the scene read easier so people know who's saying what to who.