Breakfast

A: What do you take in the morning, tea or coffee?

B: I always take tea. And you, do you also drink tea?

A: No, in the morning I prefer a cup of coffee.

B: How many lumps of sugar do you take in your coffee?

A: I usually take two lumps of sugar and have my coffee with milk or cream. Do you take milk with your tea?

В: In the morning I do, but in the afternoon I prefer a glass of strong tea with a slice of lemon.

A: What do you eat with your tea?

B: Well, I have some bread and butter or some buttered toast.

A: Do you eat anything substantial in the morning?

B: Oh, yes, I do. You see, I don't like to take a substantial lunch at my office and therefore I usually have either some ham and eggs or some cereal in the morning. Some­times for a change I can have one or two boiled eggs, or a slice of cold meat. I am not very particular about what I eat as long as it is eatable.

 

Dinner

Usually I have my dinner at home. It is my most sub­stantial meal of the day. I come home at four o'clock and say to my mother: "Ma, is our dinner ready? I am ever so hun­gry-"Yes, it is. Go and wash your hands," she answers.

My mother is not a young woman, but she does the cooking herself. While I wash my hands, my mother lays the table for dinner. She lays a white table-cloth upon the table, then puts plates, spoons, knives and forks on it. In the mid­dle of the table she puts a dish with white and brown bread, a cruet-stand with a salt-cellar and pepper- and mus­tard-pots?

I sit down at the table and begin with some kind of ap­petizer. If there is none, I take a piece of bread, sprinkle it with salt, smear it with mustard and eat it. Then my moth­er hands me a plate of soup. Usually it is cabbage soup, which I like very much. I take a spoon and begin to eat my soup with a good appetite. Yet I seldom take a second help­ing of soup.

For our second course we have either fish, or cutlets, or meat cakes, or a chop with potatoes or some other kind of vegetables.

For the third course we have either stewed fruit, or a pudding, or some kind of pie.

On Sundays and particularly on holidays our dinners are somewhat different. We sometimes have salmon, stur­geon or caviar for our hors-d'oeuvre. As to the soups, they are the same, either a clear chicken soup with small meat pies or cabbage soup.

For the second course we may have a goose or a turkey. For dessert we often have ice-cream, pineapple or some coffee with apple pie.