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This week a little cultural note for readers with an interest in British cuisine. Some of you may have had the pleasure of tucking into a full English Breakfast, and some of you may not have been so lucky. A full English breakfast is traditionally considered a good start to the day for men doing physical labour and you will see many small cafes in towns around the country offering such a menu. These cheap and basic cafes are often referred to as ‘a greasy spoon’. But, of course, other people eat a full breakfast sometimes too, usually on the weekend, when it can be enjoyed in a leisurely fashion while reading the newspapers.

Here’s a picture of a typical full English breakfast (also sometimes called ‘a fry-up’) - as you can see it consists of eggs (usually fried, but sometimes scrambled), bacon (fried or grilled), sausages (fried or grilled), baked beans, toast, mushrooms (fried), tomatoes (fried or grilled) and, of course, the pièce-de-résistance, black pudding (fried). Hash Browns are also often added. You will probably be familiar with most of the ingredients, though black pudding is likely to be a new experience for you. It is basically made from pig’s blood - among other such things - but tastes a lot better than it sounds.

Baked beans really deserve a whole blog post to themselves as they are such an integral part of every British child’s upbringing. Baked beans are famous for being one of the few dishes that unreconstructed men of our fathers’ generation are capable of cooking up for the children when mother is too tired. Bought in a tin, heated up in a pan and then poured over toast, often with cheese - baked beans are also famous for causing flatulence, which makes them even more appealing to the mischievous young.

In a ‘greasy spoon’, everything is usually fried, but in a more up-market establishment some items will be grilled so you don’t need to worry about having an instant heart-attack from all the cholesterol…

As I said, for most people a full English breakfast is something reserved for the weekends when it can be enjoyed slowly and usually renders lunch unnecessary, thus freeing up more time for reading the Sunday papers or snoozing, or boozing in the pub.

While no doubt far from healthy, it is widely believed that eating such a breakfast makes one strong and energetic and it has been suggested that it was thanks in part to the full English breakfast that we won the war…

Those interested in finding out more about this pillar of UK cuisine are welcome to have a look at Wikipedia’s article on the subject.