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It's interesting to note that Britons drink a quarter of all the tea
grown in the world each year, They are the world's greatest tea drinkers.
Many of them drink it on at least eight different occasions during the day
as they drink it both between and at meals.

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Text 3

ENGLISH FOOD

English food has a bad reputation in Europe. Foreigners often
say that in Britain there is no standard of traditional excellence in
cooking. This is what the magazine "Modern English" writes about Eng-
lish food: "The English are not interested in food. Their food is stan-
dardized, and, in general, rather dull and unimaginative. Take, for
example, the way of cooking vegetables. The English housewife simply
boils them in salt water with little or no attempt to season it. But now
many English housewives do not even find time to boil fresh vegetables.
They leave their homes and kitchens to go and work. They are not
ashamed to use frozen, canned or precooked food - simply because it
saves time". This means that there is an enormous potential market for
well-flavoured prepared food, and foreign countries are exploiting it.
From their food centres they are launching invasion on the English
kitchen.
Though many foreigners criticize English food (saying that it's
boring and tasteless, it's chips and fish with everything and totally
overcooked vegetables) this is not entirely justified. Traditional home-
cooked English food is as good as European cooking. A good example is
the traditional Sunday lunch of roastbeef, roast potatoes and Yorkshire
pudding. There is also a variety of excellent British cheeses. Englishmen
eat a lot of meat but they rarely eat raw ham. Roast turkey or goose is the
most traditional meat dish on Christmas day. Hare and venison are the
best known game meat in England. Although not many people eat pasta
or rice as the first course, they sometimes eat it as the second course.
Wine is expensive, so not many people drink it with their meals. Mineral
water is not very common, either.
Supporters of English cooking and famous cookery writers
claim that its basic ingredients, when fresh, are so full of flavour that the
English haven't had to invent sauces and complex recipes to disguise

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