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by Buck Reed

What Did The Queen Eat?

If a person eats well and enjoys their meals, one might consider themselves royalty. Although there are many differences between the way you live your life and how the royal family lives theirs, you might look at how Queen Elizabeth II dined at her table and wonder just how different people are.

First of all, we are talking about her regular daily eating habits here. Obviously, state functions are filled with over-the-top food prepared in numerous courses by “artisan” chefs we commoners can only dream of. Yes, I have cooked for Presidents and various governors and even baseball team owners, but nowhere in my mind do I believe I have the skills to prepare or even stand in the kitchen of one of these functions. And although she ate very simply on a daily basis, she still had the same talented people in the kitchen preparing her daily meals.

Anyone who knew the Queen could tell you she enjoyed a cocktail almost daily made with gin. In fact, her various homes in Buckingham Palace and Sandringham House produced their own gins made from ingredients grown in the gardens there. Her two main cocktails were a Gin Martini and Gin and Dubonnet. Maybe that’s why she lived so long.

Queen Elizabeth started each day with Earl Grey Tea which she sipped with milk, no sugar. She is credited with helping keep it the fifth most popular tea in the world and is most certainly associated with being the choice of royalty because of her affection for it. She also enjoyed the tea with a breakfast of toast with marmalade.

Queen Elizabeth also observed the British tradition of Afternoon Tea and enjoyed tea cookies, scones with jam and clotted cream as well as tea sandwiches. Her Majesty’s favorite sandwiches were made with cream cheese and smoked salmon and served with the crust removed. It might be a good time to see if your kids are in line to be the next monarch of the British Empire, Charles III cannot last forever!

A well-known sportswoman most of her life, Queen Elizabeth was fond of venison, wild game birds and other game. She often dined on a hamburger made with venison. For the most part she enjoyed these evening meals with a simple vegetable and almost never had a starch served with her meal. She was not keen on garlic or dishes made with too much onion.

As far as snacks, she carried the same purse with her all the time which was large enough to hold her Penny Jam-style sandwich. This was a simple sandwich made with butter and jam.

At the end of dinner, she never skipped dessert, after all she was Queen. Her favorite dessert was Tea Biscuit Cake which was always available at her table. This was tea biscuits crushed and bound together with a ganache made with eggs and covered with chocolate. The recipe is easy enough if you want to give it a go.

We all marvel at her extraordinary life, taking and serving office since she was 14, her service during WWII (she actually drove a truck for the war effort), serving under, over, or with (I don’t know how it worked) 15 prime ministers and 14 presidents and cannot help but wonder how she kept the whole Royalty phenomenon moving into modern times. But how she lived her everyday life should be made note of as well.