Easter eggs, mint sauce and black tea

Sunday English breakfast this morning!
With sunday English sun shining...

and some chocolate eggs for my housemates, but it seems they didn't even notice them...

I learned some about Easter customs.

Here in England, as in France, children seek chocolate eggs hidden in the garden.
And we have a long week-end, because not only Easter Monday is holiday, but Good Friday too!

But in Poland (one of my housemates is Polish), kids go to the church with a basket full of eggs (real, hard boiled, and painted) and sausages, and other things, and the priest blesses it. Then every family share the meal together.

On Monday, they flush each other with water. It's called "wet Monday".

In Spain (at least in Valencia), there is another tradition with hard boiled eggs: you break it on each other's head, and then eat it. And you eat some kind of long sausage, Longaniza de Pascua.

If you want to share your own Easter tradition, please go on!

Well, as I said, I was invited tonight for Easter supper, in an English family, in a real English house, with a bow-window, and everyting! As said Sue, it's the best way to get familiar with local culture. To hear the accent, to know the habits, to taste the food... By the way, I have to tell you something about lamb with mint sauce: stop laughing at it, that's delicious.

I had really good time, even if it's hard to follow a conversation where everyone is talking at the same time... But I love British way of speaking. At least the one they had in here. Even when we're talking about something casual, it seems like if it's precious! Delightful!

And for sure, after the dinner, we went in the living room for a cup of tea.

So now let's talk a little about this most famous tradition, which is for us like a definition of british people: tea.

First of all, no, englishmen don't always make their tea directly from leaves, like an ancestral tradition. They use teabags, as everyone.

But if you ask for a tea, don't expect to get a cup of clear colored water. Your mug will be full of a cloudy beverage: indeed, they will naturally pour milk in your tea. It seems that it is the standard. In the family where I was invited, when I asked for a tea "black" (without milk), it sounded like an unnatural request. Even if they knew french people drank it like that, they told me they founded black tea awful, too strong.

And even after having discussed at length french and english habits, about milk, sugar, lemon, biscuits dunked or not dunked into the tea, the girl who prepared it brought me a normal cup of tea: with milk.

To end this day as it started, they gave me an Easter egg. Here it is, I think you don't know it in France (at least I didn't): a creme egg. Chocolate fill in with creme, to make it look like a real egg, with white and yellow parts. Well... it's good, though a little too sweet.