Mr D. Our cheese comes right off the farm. I'm not a big beer drinker but many restaurants have their own brewing permit. I can say that our wines as as good as anything the French have.

Would anyone like a kiss?

Chips were 3d. Or four penn'orth for a large.

But breakfasts of home-cured bacon, and eggs from our own hens, with home-baked crusty white bread, were what I recall most vividly.

With a cuppa, of course. :)

"Suet puddings - especially Sussex Pond Pudding"

Is their anything you people will not boil?

Buckskins: I don't think you should criticise British produce when the US only sugared water for beer. Great British ales, they are brilliant.

And what about the brilliant British cheeses? Cheshire, Lancashire, Stilton .. the US only has squashed milk.

staffordshire oatcakes

Mr D. When you get done with that. Try some boiled dog. Buffalo chips being the desired fuel.

I liked the American breakfasts. When I had spent the night under the trees I used to love having a huge breakfast. Then I would keep cycling.

Yes lovely Californian wine. Actually the best restaurants are cheap family ones in rural Asia when the produce is local and fresh.

Hi Keir, Sussex Pond Pudding is steamed, in fact the suet not so long ago was boiled in a cloth. Lox is gonna be in my stuff for this but here goes anyway. I bought a couple of swords from a guy in Scotland, he then invited us to stay for what I guess they call up there Tea Time. Here's what he did. He boiled water in this huge pot.He then chucked in some chopped vegetables. Lots of onions and potatoes.He then yanks out a couple of lbs of 2 different types of sausage.....wait for it.....and dumps them in the boiling water.After a half hour or so we get it ladled into a soup plate. I looked at the slurry on my plate, the sausages had turned GRAY, and so had I.

Aren't people gluttons for punishment!

I did tell you about the time I took some magic mushrooms in Lake Toba (Sumatra) and the place had two dogs that went off to be butchered. We used to call them chicken curry and beef stew. Dog was on the menu.

Here is yet another of Scotland's treats.(I say Scotland because thats where this..meal..was served up to us.

Take some ground up fatty hamburger meat. I bet you can guess the next move?.. Dump it in boiling water...I'm not making this up..Stir on a low heat for 45 minutes or so....Now pour the results over boiled (of course) potatoes. Walla...yet one more weapon to fight the Scottish winter with. Some hardy folks up yonder.

'Now pour the results over boiled (of course) potatoes.'

What is wrong with boiled potatoes?

Like Sussex scones, baked with fruit and milk? Or queen pudding, and bread and butter pudding, likewise baked in an oven? Do you know that of which you speak?

Cornish pasties? Scotch pancakes? Melton Mowbray pork pies? Yorkshire parkins? Chelsea buns, Abernethy biscuits, Eccles cakes, Dundee cakes? Victoria sponges? Charlottes, crumbles, pies of meats and poultry, onions and mushrooms, green vegetables, cheese and fruits? Salads? Kedgerees? Which of these is much acquainted with hot water?

Alright, purple-sprouting broccoli and asparagus are steamed, and potatoes are boiled, but are often then mashed with butter to make a very delicious accompaniment to, say, fried sausages of pork with sage.

To say nothing of other meats and fish, which are generally roasted, grilled or fried, or cooked slowly in a rich, unctuous liquor.

And there's nothing like real gravy from Angus beef or Welsh lamb.

We really should feel sorry for poor foreigners. :)

'I'm just drinking'

Unfortunately not.

'They're mine.'

I humbly beg your pardon. I'll make do with Chorley cakes. :)

And one could go on and on around the towns and regions.

You see, nobody can argue that the British do not have a very respectable 'cuisine' of their own- much of which involves no ebullition whatever, except what occurs in a dry oven, if boiling really matters. The aforementioned Sussex pud is not a watery affair, anyway.

'Does anyone else here think that the author, Helen, should invite the blog commentators to a slap up old English style dinner at her place?'

Maybe we could invite Helen to twenty dinner parties, of English fare, without repetition of any dish. I'd be happy to provide the menus, sorry, bills of fare. Perhaps one would have to include the odd bottle of wine from across the channel, but many of those, by rights, belong to the English Crown anyway! :)

@Kier: I've already mentioned Eccles cake. They're mine.

My grandad was a cook in the army in the 1930s. After he worked as a sausage and black pudding maker. He liked his whiskey.

Does anyone else here think that the author, Helen, should invite the blog commentators to a slap up old English style dinner at her place?

@Buckskins: Sounds like your Scottish sword seller had the basic approach to cooking downpat. I went to this Texan man's house and he lay all the vegetables in a row and urinated on them. That was his cooking method. He called it the "Taking the Piss", a form of flash woking.

Read carefully.

When sober.

I'll bring the local produce of Australia at this time of year. Let me assure you it will go own with a hit.

Buckskins is probably busy with the fires in Texas.

Mr. Divine - there is a story that spuds came via Ireland, when some got washed up on the west coast of Ireland from Spanish Armarda wrecks from the storms, and the Irish planted and ate them when they saw them growing on the seashore afterwards, in the sixteenth century.

English cuisine, that would be curried chips and a Mars bar. For a more definitive answer simply enter a British restaurant when you are overseas. A British restaurant, why do you think there is such a plethora of them world wide ????

Hi Helen, I should think any country with a history of raising domestic animals could claim Black Pudding as theirs.

Mr D. the national dish of Wales is seaweed!!