More of a Bovril man myself, but I can have Marmite in a push.
Like whoever else said it. a full English is a hangover cure. Hell, it is the weekend now and I’m only making bacon sandwiches (with HP).
Amusing to see some people in here still struggling with the name “Black Pudding”. Is it really that difficult?
I wouldn’t say it’s difficult, but to the average American it’s strange. Over here “pudding” is a dessert. And it’s not just any dessert. It’s a specific category of desserts—roughly speaking, things that in Britain would be called custards. The most common varieties are chocolate and vanilla pudding.
So if you’ve never been served black pudding before, then it’s kind of like being told you’re getting “red cake” and finding yourself eating beef steak.
But, but, some totally ignorant people aside, and although we may avoid black pudding, surely the knowledge is universal among Americans that “black pudding” is not dessert pudding? And even amongst those of us who’ve never had black pudding (a group of which I am a member), we’ve all experienced “Yorkshire pudding” at some point in our lives, and asked why it doesn’t resemble Jello brand instant pudding?
I think I’m a pretty smart guy, and have always been a great lover of things British. I must admit, though, I had never heard of “black pudding” until I went to live in Scotland for several months in 1976, at the ripe old age of 21. At first, I didn’t even know what I was eating—just some kind of funky-but-tasty sausage. I was a bit taken aback when I learned it was congealed blood, but I never stopped eating it.
Did the Pythons ever refer to it? Or the Fawltys? Those are probably the only other places I might have learned of it before I watched an episode of Wallace and Gromit, so it’s not at all odd that most Americans have no clue as to what “black pudding” is.
Also had absolutely no idea what “Yorkshire pudding” was until I migrated south to England.
As I said in post #2, that video of Americans reacting to a full English breakfast is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of similar videos that have been put on Youtube recently. Each of them consists of half a dozen to a dozen citizens of X country trying the meals/snacks/desserts/candies/commercials/cartoons/whatever of Y country. Other than acquaint you with the names of those meals/snacks/desserts/candies/commercials/cartoons/whatever, you will learn nothing interesting about those items. The videos were planned that way. If you got together a half a dozen to a dozen citizens of X country at random, they would simply try the items and murmur something about liking them or disliking them and then forget it. The makers of the videos don’t want that however. They want people who will act like obnoxious jerks. Those videos are about as realistic as the average TV reality program, i.e., not realistic at all. They are designed to get a bunch of people making snide comments about other countries in order to show how xenophobic and jingoistic they can act.
I actually didn’t discover Marmite until a couple months later when a New Zealander introduced me to it while I was volunteering in Croatia. (Location details given because somehow in my five or six months in the UK itself, nobody introduced me to the stuff.) After being somewhat surprised by it the first time (I wasn’t told what it was, and black spread on toast had my taste buds expecting something like Nutella, pretty much the diametric opposite flavor of Marmite) I fell in love with it. Although since I’ve developed a slight preference for Vegemite. Never had the other salty black spreads.
I first had it when I went on a camping trip with some kids from a children’s home in Brighton. The first couple of days were heavy on Marmite and (separately, thank God!) bully beef sandwiches.
I got along just fine on that diet, but the kids were shocked (“Eeeeeeeeeew!”) when they saw me making a peanut butter and jam sandwich. I don’t think I was ever able to convince them how great a combination that is.
Vegemite I never got to try until I started living in Canada. Sometimes it’s all that’s available at Mrs Bridges’ Bakery.
Nutella I had never heard of until I was studying in Moscow in 1989. Love it in combination with bananas! :o
Well, it’s not got much spam in it, has it? 
It’s got quite a lot of Spam, actually!
To me there is only one definition of a breakfast which includes only these foods.
Toast, bagel, english muffin, biscuits.
Eggs
Fried potatoes, tater tots, hasbrowns…etc
Bacon, Sausage, canadian ham
fried chicken or cold pizza
Grits, Oatmeal…etc
Donuts, most cereals…etc is just junk sugar best left for the dessert crowds. Might as well choke down a pound of cotton candy while you’re at it.
Have you ever tried to look up how many calories there are in each of those items you list in your definition of a breakfast?
Amen. Most workdays it’s either yogurt or oatmeal, coffee, and maybe some fruit, if my locust-like sons haven’t eaten it all.
Sundays though; it’s always bacon, eggs, and some combination of the following- biscuits, pancakes, hash browns or waffles, along with coffee and sometimes cream gravy.
I do think that the English Breakfast is one of those world heritage sorts of things- it’s really good, hearty and sticks with you. The UK is the only place where I don’t remember being ravenous at lunchtime after being a tourist all morning.
And… British-style back bacon is divine. Not quite bacon (as we Americans think of it), not quite Canadian bacon, and not quite ham, but some kind of amazing hybrid of all three.
Too many. 
If I were going to pick an ideal American-style breakfast for myself, I’d go with a chicken-fried steak smothered in sausage gravy, served with hashbrowns topped with grilled onions, cheddar, jalapenos, and more gravy, a few overeasy eggs, and some sourdough toast for dipping in the eggs and/or gravy.
(A good T-bone is an acceptable substitute for a chicken-fried steak, but I’m not made of money.)
I was actually asking HeXen, who was complaining about certain breakfasts being just “junk sugar” but listed his/her own favorites which also contained a lot of calories.
Speaking as a fairly broad-cultured American… Up until I went to Ireland, I thought that “black pudding” was a monster that split in two if you hit it with a sword, and attacked for acid damage. I think I’d heard of “blood pudding”, and knew more or less what it was, and recognized “black pudding” as being basically the same thing when I did encounter it. And I don’t think I’ve ever had “Yorkshire pudding”, even to this day. I have long been familiar with plum pudding, bread pudding, and rice pudding, and knew that they were different from standard American “pudding”, but they’re all at least still desserts.
If you watched Python and Fawlty Towers you likely also watched The Goodies which in one episode featured the ancient art of Ecky-Thump, where the practitioner wielded a - you guessed it - whole black pudding. This was so funny that a viewer died laughing.
I enjoy many funky foods, but have never been fond of black pudding.
White pudding, however, is a different matter. Made of pork, pork liver, pork fat, oatmeal, and seasoning. No blood.
I almost split a gut (literally!) one night watching The Unknown Comic on TV:
I’ve heard of Llap-Goch, but never of Ecky-Thump:
http://semganas.blogspot.ru/2006/12/preemptive-strike.html
I damned near died laughing in a bookstore one day, reading this! :o
Calories? I’m talking more about diabetes. Some people eat that junk every single day. But since you ask an egg has 78 calories. A donut has over 200 in most cases. I usually just eat 1 egg for breakfast, maybe 3 times a week, other times I may have an english muffin, which is about 70 calories…hence why I’m slender. My list was items I consider breakfast, not items I eat all at once, duh.
Yes, and some people eat a large amount of all the things you list as your definition of a breakfast and thus consume more calories per meal than someone who eats just a donut and a glass of milk or a bowl of cereal with milk. What’s important is the total amount of calories (and other nutrients) you consume, not that each individual item has a lot of calories. Telling people that they should eat toast, bagels, English muffins, biscuits, eggs, fried potatoes, tater tots, hash browns, bacon, sausage, Canadian bacon, fried chicken, cold pizza, grits, or oatmeal rather than donuts and cereal with milk isn’t very useful. They need to know the overall amount of various nutrients in a meal, not that of each individual item.