Our first “International Night” – the full English breakfast
During the lazy days of summer I come up with a lot of brilliant ideas. Most of these ideas never materialize once I get back to work in the fall, but ones involving food somehow seem to have the best chance of survival! International Night came about when I was looking at an online forum back in the early part of the summer. I’ll admit that I blatantly stole the idea from some creative poster who was planning on making a meal from a different country one night each week for her family. I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I put the concept in the back of my mind to try sometime. This week I finally started what I plan to be a family tradition with food, facts and fun stuff from merry old England!
When I asked my oldest son what he wanted to be our first country for International Night, he quickly responded with Germany. After a little online research I decided to prepare sauerbraten as the main course. However, since I only decided to do this on Tuesday of this week and all the recipes I found required three days of marinating, German night had to be postponed until next week. In an effort to find a quick substitute, I came across the full English breakfast.
I’ve eaten at some British themed restaurants, but I’ve never heard of this delicacy. I’m familiar with fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash and other well known British culinary fare, but the full English breakfast (or full Monty as some seem to call it) has eluded me all these years. If you can’t tell from the picture above, it consists of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms, toast and baked beans. Apparently another item often served with it is a slice of fried black pudding. I’m pretty sure you can’t find black pudding in our area, but even if it I could have found it, I doubt I would have included it because I think that would have been a little more than we could handle! We tried to remain true to the British classic, but I think they serve their fried eggs considerably softer cooked than we like ours.
To go along with our night of all things British, we watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’ve been waiting for the right time to introduce my 12 year-old son to the finer things like Monty Python, and this was the perfect opportunity. I also printed some information about British cuisine for him to read. His current career goal is to become a chef, so International Night could be more than just a tasty meal for him each week!
I plan to post each week’s International Night along with the recipes for the meal. However, this week there really isn’t a recipe. I just fried up some bacon and sausage and then fried the eggs in the same pan. I cooked the tomatoes and mushrooms in another skillet for a few minutes, toasted some bread and heated up a can of pork and beans on the stove. I was a very filling meal, even though we ate it for dinner instead of breakfast.
Tags: Breakfast, International, Meats, pork, Vegetables