As British as Beans on toast for tea

Problem
Where can I have beans on toast for tea?

Answer
Anywhere, my dear. All you need is a toaster, bread, and baked beans. (You could even manage without the plain or salted butter.)

Story
I used to have beans on toast for tea after school when I was a teenager. A filling snack was made with doorstep bread, meaning a thick slice. My mother bought unsalted butter because she wanted to be able to use the butter for baking cakes.

The topping was Heinz baked beans. I remember the TV ads. Heinz means beans.

Later baked beans on toast was also a stalwart of student days, a quick snack, often lunch or supper. However, after I married, it became considered not a proper meal, a substitute for a cooked meal, only an in between meal.

When I arrived in America to live, you can imagine my amazement on driving over a hill and seeing before us a factory with the words Heinz. 57 varieties. It was a shock to read the name Heinz was German and that baked beans were American.

The other day, late at night, I was just thinking I would like a quick snack. Baked beans. Along came a member of my family with leftover from a take away from KFC. Baked beans! A small enough portion not to break the diet.

Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

A few days later I was in Morrisons supermarket in London and surveying the choice of baked beans. Half size tins of Heinz baked beans, full size tins, lower calories, and own brand baked beans.

Nowadays supermarkets stock all kinds of own label goods. You can get cola to drink and beans to eat from an own brand. Sometimes not as good as the market leader. Sometimes you would not know the difference. Supermarket own brands often come in two ranges, the budget and the premium range.

You can buy Morrisons own brand Savers baked beans. Good enough. Morrisons is a British firm, famed for buying from local farms when they started.

I had some yesterday. I must buy some tomorrow. In a previous post I described how I packed baked beans as emergency food when I went to Singapore to live and was waiting for my shipment of furniture from home to arrive (slowly by sea).

See the story about baked beans in my earlier post
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/instant-england-for-travellers.html
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Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.