And another treasured institution falls over:
The Full English breakfast could die out within a generation because almost one in five young people living in the UK have never eaten a fry-up.
Despite being a mainstay of British society since the Victorian era, a nationwide study has revealed 17 per cent of British people under 30 have never tucked into the greasy breakfast food.
Millennials are avoiding the traditional meal due to health concerns, with a fifth of 18 to 30-year-olds saying they associate the dish with heart attacks and obesity.
The majority would prefer to have smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, smashed avocado on toast or oatmeal pancakes for breakfast over the Full English.
Here’s what they’re missing, the little shits:
Great Caesar’s bleeding hemorrhoids… how could this sublime creation be replaced by something that looks like calcified sputum on toast?
My own kids (Millennials all) would smother me in my sleep if I were to offer them this slop instead of a Full English on Christmas Day — or any day, come to think of it — but then they’re not Brits, are they?
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m unalterably set in my ways (“No, Kim! Say it ain’t so!”) — I mean, the last time I had breakfast at Fortnum & Mason, I even had a delicious Duck Rarebit (fried duck egg on hot beer cheese over a piece of toast, as below):
…so I am open to a bit of change — I just don’t want the thing I temporarily changed from to disappear because some pasty-faced weenies think it’s unheaaaaalthyyyy!
Let me promise you all one thing: if the time comes when I go over to Blighty, go out for brekkie and find the Full English has disappeared from the menu, there will be murders. Just the prospect of “avo toast” on a breakfast table makes me feel weak.
Is it too early for a pint of gin? I think not.
I need to re-think this breakfast thing. At my age, it will make little difference what I eat for breakfast. The damage is already done. And BTW, it’s never too early for a pint of gin, or pretty much anything else, for that matter.
See my comment on an earlier post. All the more reason to start your own pub specializing in English ales and breakfasts at any time. Dam…I can see you coming out of the kitchen with a big plate and wiping your hands on a greasy apron.
I prefer the Full American: Bacon, Fried eggs, Toast with butter and marmalade, (Biscuit if you’re down South), Eggs O’Brien, Orange Juice and Tea. Or of course there’s the Infantry favorite after a field exercise: Steak and Eggs with all the trimmings. Chicken and Waffles. Sausage Biscuit with Grits.
Well, this one has black pudding/blood sausage at any rate. LOL And I never understood beans for breakfast.
I learned the joys of avocado on (buttered) toast over 40 years ago, pity it’s now snowflake food. Don’t knock it until you try it. I had it this morning, but with a couple of poached eggs on top. Be sure to apply salt and pepper, and hot sauce if you like. Yum.
I used to enjoy blueberry pie until blueberries became the miracle berry that was supposed to help the nuts and berries crowd live forever, and now it seems that blueberries are right up there with caviar.
That avocado looks disgusting.
I’ll take the full English or around here known as the Irish breakfast hands down.
JQ
Wife makes me eat avacodo on toast in the mistaken idea I will live longer. pah.
Not only sputum but cold and slimy as well. Egg might make it better I suppose but still not a fan.
Now that English breakfast would go some towards filling the belly
While I was in England this past year (vacation with family), I availed myself of the English breakfast offered by the hotel (and it was a NICE hotel; sadly, no 6X, though I did try Kopparberg cider).
About the only problem I had was that evidently the English do not know how to make scrambled eggs. I grant, there’s only so much you can do with a pot kept on low heat for extended periods, but I’ve had better scrambled eggs at the freaking Cafe Momo in Atlanta during Dragon*Con.
If you’re in a budget hotel over here then yes, your scrambled eggs will be poor. They make it in huge batches.
Tuck into that English Breakfast and you’ll have the energy to go out and make sure the sun never sets on the British Empire. Consider that the French breakfast is a croissant and coffee. What can you do with so little in your stomach, anyway? (/rhetorical question)
Given you Yanks are now chock-a-block full of illegal Messicans, you shouldn’t be so hostile to avocados – or corn tortillas or various salsas.
My full English is now built on a foundation of fried corn tortillas instead of fried bread, with lashings of guacamole plus salsas, green, red and some weird purple super-hot stuff the wife gets from a Latino crony of hers.
I also sprinkle the whole mass with something the local grocer calls “Spicy Grated Tex-Mex Cheese Food”. It comes out of nozzle number 9 at the local Tar Sands plant, but it’s goooood.
My only complaint ever with the Full English was the lack of spice, but the Latins solved that.
Plus, yesterday, I found some room in my gigantic cast iron pan for some leftover rice. Not bad, not bad at all.
Don’t worry, not all of us are hostile to avocados. I, for one, believe that avocados were the biblical “manna”, but were described otherwise for PR reasons. The skin resembles a leathery lizard, the inner nut will break your teeth, and the intermediate fruit looks like something in an infant’s diaper. That aside, the fruit of a proper avocado is the closest thing to ecstasy your mouth I have ever found ( although some whiskeys come close ). Mixed with lemon juice, salt, and diced tomatoes in the proper proprtions they are incomparable.
But for breakfast? On toast?? Perish the thought.
Ah, the full English. Yum. But it takes time to prepare, cook, eat, and to do the clean-up and so few people have time these days. So smashing some avocado on some toast is much more convenient. You can put it in a box and eat it on the train during the commute.
BTW If you’re eating avocado the proper way, i.e. out of the skin with a spoon, try a dressing that is 50% salad cream and 50% sweet chili sauce.