Great Britain is a strange old place. It’s often said that the English have got it all backwards when it comes to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead of having a hearty breakfast, a decent sized lunch and a small bite to eat at dinner, most of the UK does it the other way round, that is except for when you’re having a traditional English breakfast; mmmm black pudding, nom nom nom.
Of course if you’ve ever been abroad in Europe, especially in the Eastern bloc countries, you will at some point have experienced the continental breakfast. I think my first time was in Sweden, back in about 2003 or so. Having managed to well and truly bodge up my flight times I was forced to spend a night in a hostel in Nyköping, a few miles out of Stockholm. After a troubled night’s sleep I went down to the lounge area for a bite to eat, and there I was initiated into the cult of continental breakfast.
Your typical continental breakfast includes croissants, bread, slices of ham, yoghurt, fruit, toast, jam and cheese! The last one in particular threw me; I mean who on Earth eats cheese for breakfast? The Scandinavians have some pretty strange ideas when it comes to food, rotting salted fish for example, although moose isn’t too bad, kind of like beef really, but a lot drier and tougher. Despite my reservations about cheese for breakfast, I have to admit that if you can force it all down at 8am then having a big meal at breakfast makes a lot more sense than eating loads just before bed.
