Thursday February 19, 2009 | 20 comments
I once spent three weeks in Britain living on tea alone. I was there to learn the Queen’s English at the Bell School of Languages, and boarded at a private home. Dorothy, my landlady, lovingly reassured my parents as they took their leave that she would make me something “really nice” for tea.
My parents departed, while I wondered what she meant by “tea”. In my native French Switzerland, tea was something you drank at 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM, with perhaps a digestive infusion at 7.30 PM. We make watches for a reason.
Late that afternoon, my landlady, who looked a bit like Tracy Ullman in a housedress, complete with netted bun hairdo, announced tea time had come. To make me feel at home, she had cooked me something familiar and “continental”: spaghetti.
I was thrilled. Thrilled and starving. Alas, what she presented was not quite the al dente pasta I was used to. I stared at the plate: a gooey mound of overcooked, canned, cut spaghetti on top of a slice of brown toast, which valiantly attempted to float in a pond of tomato juice – a wrecked raft, a sinking island. This gastronomic coup was accompanied by a cup of tea, hence the name of the meal. I managed a smile and a thank you and dug in. To say that it was atrocious would not be fair: it was simply inedible – soggy, tasteless, mushy, and saltier than a sailor.
I downed a few bites for the sake of peaceful Anglo-Swiss relations and proclaimed that, while the “spaghetti” was absolutely delicious, my stomach was a tad upset by the culture shock, so that I might stick to tea proper for the rest of the day.
The tea stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the meal: it was delicious. Served with shiny crystals of an exotic brown sugar (the Swiss sugar I knew looked like snow) and a rich, thick cream, it was a meal in itself. I silently thanked the heavens and had several more cups. I asked Dorothy what kind of tea it was. She looked a tad puzzled, and hesitatingly replied: ”Why, English tea, dear.” I left it at that. Clearly, she was going to hold on to her precious little secret.
The next morning, I woke up to a familiar smell. Wonderful, I thought, and climbed down the stairs towards the dining room. Dorothy had made a brave attempt at coffee, just for me. My pleasure, sad to say, was short-lived: dishwater-cum-chicory potion does not good coffee make. I opted for a different tack and declared that we Swiss were clearly Barbarians in matters of beverages, and English tea was by far the better. She had made me a convert: only tea from now on. Dorothy beamed. Tea also worked fairly well to soften the rock-hard scones she had unearthed from the backyard bunker and laid proudly in front of me.
Culinary matters did not improve in the following days: canned beans on toast, tuna on toast, even Heinz 57 on toast. Had they ever heard of vegetables? Why yes, they had! Lovely Dorothy declared she would happily make me green peas for dinner – I mean, for tea.
They had once been green, perhaps; they may even have had a spherical shape at some point; what they were now was an oozy, floury, gray mush, slapped – naturally – on the inevitable toast. It reminded me of the paste of wet newspaper and flour I used to cast my dolls’ broken legs. I spread half a stick of butter onto it and bore down. With that and five more cups of tea, abundantly enhanced with cream and sugar, I had at least five food groups covered: fats, sugars, starches, caffeine, and cardboard.
Looking back, I marvel I was not struck with rickets. There was the mango chutney, I suppose, and they did have a dayglo-green Iceberg lettuce that Dorothy appreciatively claimed stayed “fresh” for a month. And, of course, there were the Indian restaurants – the only edible food in provincial England in the late 60′s.
Some of you will be protesting by now: “Oh, but you’ve never had a proper English Sunday meal!” Oh yes, I have. Lamb boiled for hours, its chewy, greasy tastelessness decorated by a dollop of slimy mint jelly; shepherds’ pies hard enough for Xtreme Frisbie; vegetables cooked until every last shred of nutrition has been rendered: I’d had it all.
So I survived on tea – or rather on cream and sugar – for a whole three weeks. That and watercress and cucumber sandwiches, which I discovered at the school cafeteria two weeks into my penance. They no doubt scared the rickets away.
The images accompanying this post are original photographs taken specifically for the piece by Richard S. Chow.
Loved the read, MU. Have to agree about the ingredients of the British diet.
Maybe that’s why they eat so much ice-cream…. and have the unhealthiest teeth!
Hilarious! Alas – though the proud English in me would like to protest – it is all too true! After leaving home – I finally understood that tea wasn’t just a vehicle for cream and sugar, and that it could actually stand alone as a delightful and varied beverage. I still do find comfort in that sweet hot milky concoction, several times a day and in all weather. It is indeed, the opiate of the English masses! Indian food and hot tea go wonderfully together. It saved us all.
Sophie
What a fun piece to read!
And so informative. I thought Heinz 57 Sauce was only good for meatloaf – who knew you could skip the beef and just go straight onto the loaf?
–Reminds me of my German Oma who secretly kept me alive on illicit cups of sugary coffee drowned in milk when I wouldn’t eat her offerings of head-cheese and blood sausage, at the culinarily suspicious age of four.
WHY do parents make us buckle up, eat our vegetables, and go to bed on time, but then blithely leave us with Old Ladies bent on poisoning us? Even Hansel and Gretel got gingerbread before they faced their mortality.
Baked beans on toast!!!! A true British culinary invention – LOL I will confess to enjoying this meal myself, on occasion.
The English tea with a rich cream and brown sugar crystals sounds divine. Ummmmm.
Very funny! Although, not a huge tea person, I am a fan of toast, which, if it weren’t there to bolster the sludge served I dare say even the English wouldn’t eat it.
What a bone-rattling account, Murielle!
The spaghetti routine brings back memories of my youth in Chicago in the 1940s, during which we, as Friday meat-abstaining Catholics often ate Franco-American canned spaghetti. At the time, I thought it was delicious, but then what early teen doesn’t relish heavily sweetened food! The spaghetti had the familiar “can” flavor common to early attempts to can food and it was mixed with copious quanties of heavy tomato “sauce.”
My earliest experience with the English tea event was in the mid 1980s. My wife and I visited a tea shop in a square (Leister?) which also contained an ancient church called St. Martin’s-by-the-Field. It was “High Tea time” I think and we had tea with scones and clotted cream. I am not much for the cream but the scones were delicious, as was the tea.
So, apparently, the English improved on their tea service in the twenty uears between your experience and mine.
The meals you describe rang a sad school dinner bell with me. But I’m deeply intrigued by the tea with cream and brown sugar. I’m sixty, English and have never come across this. Always milk and always white sugar. Brown sugar would flavour it too much and was reserved for coffee. I didn’t come across fresh cream very much at all until my teens, I don’t think anyone did; it tended to be of the tinned variety and the thought of tinned cream in tea is a horrible thought! Or even worse the pressurised cream that comes in an aerosol.
This is too funny! Makes me remember all the culture shocks I went through as a kid visiting France, staying with friends of the parents! Thanks for the memory goose.
This could be the start of a new fad: the British Tea Diet. Three weeks on nothing but tea! What a great way to lose weight!
Ah, i love this. Is there anything you can’t do??? it made me laugh and run for the kitchen just to make sure i really had fresh veggies in the fridge :-) i am sending this to all my british friends.
Thank you all for your comments!
Em, I do remember the mini-cubes of white sugar, about a cubic centimeter, that were served in – not sure what to call them – the British equivalent of an American diners or coffee shops? But my landlady definitely loved her brown crystal sugar. I also used to love the multicolor Rainbow sugar they sold at Harrod’s or Fortnum and Mason’s, but when I sent a friend of mine to get me some recently, they no longer carried it. Did you grow up in a large city? That might explain the scarce access to fresh cream. I suspect my landlady kept a cow in the backyard bunker, because she was very fond of her cream, as was I…. perhaps that’s what she meant by something “really nice” for tea! :) Never heard a moo, though…
Murielle -
Your wonderful literary images elicit memories of what we yanks used to call Shit on a Shingle. You apparently managed to dodge a bullet with one very important English delicacy that I was bold (or stupid) enough to try – Blood Pudding. Yikes!
Thanks for this very enjoyable read.
Sandy:
Oh no I didn’t! Believe it or not, blood sausage (blood pudding in a gut casing) was a carryover from the Depression days in Switzerland, when you had to use every part of everything… It is still one of the four or five foods I won’t eat, that and calves brains, ox balls, and red beets. Snails too. Yuck.
Oh, no red beets?! One of my favorite vegetable dishes is fresh red beets, served shortly after they are cooked so they are still nice and warm, chopped into small cubes and sprinkled generously with olive oil, red wine vinegar, lots of minced garlic, and a little salt. Delicious!
Possibly fresh cream was still a bit of a luxury item in 50s Britain and my family was not well off, (I was brought up in a large village by the way) which may be why I didn’t have it as a child although I certainly remember ‘top of the milk’ being kept for putting on puddings. It’s more the idea of actually having cream in tea at all that puzzles me. I wonder whether other British people have come across this? Perhaps it’s a regional thing – although I’ve spent time in various parts of the UK and never been offered tea with anything other than milk or lemon.
Hope this doesn’t come across as doubting you! I’m not at all. I just think you had some very strange/surprising/unfortunate culinary experiences!
Erika – I love beets. One of my favorite veggies. Very healthy for you as well as being sweet and delicious. I especially love gold beets. I have to admit though, I have never tried it with garlic. Will have to give that a try.
Gee.. look at what I missed growing up in the Bronx. Tea was for when I was sick… served with dry toast if stomach problems were involved! Later, I discovered that the tea in a Chinese restaurant tasted different and good. My older sister drinks only English Breakfast tea. I still have a lot to learn. It’s a good thing you had to suffer only three weeks’ worth of living on tea. An enjoyable read!
Really cute little piece, Murielle. My Mom’s a Brit, who grew a stunning vegetable garden on our farm in Missouri. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t get the fresh green beans to look like the ones in the can . . . Ah well, there you have it.
Really nice Murielle.. you are quite the writer.. I enjoyed your story! Time for tea for 2 soon! Annette
HA, my husband is British and often tells me stories of how he grew up eating spaghetti on toast or beans on toast for dinner every night – when they got home, his parents would check the trash to make sure that the can from the spaghetti or beans was in there (to prove my husband had eaten it), so he resorted to putting the spaghetti/beans in a plastic bag and seeing how far he could chuck it over the neighbor’s fence, and then throwing out the can!
But I promise you the food has gotten better :) my last trip to England was deeelicious. if you’re ever curious about why the food became so bad in the first place, you can read a short history that I wrote here: http://www.tripwolf.com/en/blog/2009/08/17/british-food-is-awesome-really/