Eating Edwardian

Bang goes another one of Britain's great institutions. The BBC sent Giles Coren to spend a week eating like an Edwardian gentleman and it comes off as something of an ordeal on par with being asked to consume an entire undercooked manatee-- a point that made me raise my eyebrows so high that my pince nez fell off my nose and damn near landed in the port. Had to ring for Beaches to help me find them, damn his eyes! I mean, look at this typical menu from day one that M. Coren had to soldier through:

• Breakfast: Porridge, sardines, curried eggs, grilled cutlets, coffee, hot chocolate, bread, butter, honey.
  
• Lunch: Sauté of kidneys on toast, mashed potatoes, macaroni au gratin, rolled ox tongue.
  
• Afternoon tea: Fruit cake, Madeira cake, hot potato cakes, coconut rocks, bread, toast, butter.
• Dinner: Oyster patties, sirloin steak, braised celery, roast goose, potato scallops, vanilla soufflé.

Begads, the milksop doesn't even mention any wines, spirits or port and he was already whinging before he even tucked into his curried eggs! Something tells me that M. Coren hails from a section of British society that does a bit too well for itself on salads and pasta in obscenely tiny portions and washed down with over-priced mineral water of dubious breeding at Islington cafes boasting eight different varieties of lattes between workouts at the gym and colonic irrigation or whatever else is the latest craze.

But seriously, I really was puzzled that he found this food so hard to stomach. I spent a great deal of my youth on a farm in the North and while we weren't what you'd call well off, my family did appreciate a decent spread and the above would have been a fairly normal offering-- even a bit on the lean side, though the oysters would almost certainly have been served on the half-shell as God intended rather than wasted in patties. In fact, I'd still be eating pretty much like that today if I had the time and I could wean wife and daughter away from the pizzas and microwaves.

Mr. Creosote was so misunderstood.