Girls just want to have lunch

[venta]

I'm working from home today, and I've just been overcome by a fit of nostalgia.

Slightly after one I was sitting in the kitchen with a plate of bread, cheese and dates on the table, and a paperback in my hand. And suddenly I was back at home, with my mum, eating little-dinner.

The usual mealtime-model when I was growing up was to have a main meal (dinner) in the middle of the day and a sandwich-based tea in the evening. I got dinner at school, and my Dad was usually working somewhere with a canteen or, at the worst, a pub. Did the mother cook a main meal for herself on the days she wasn't at work ? I have to admit that I'm not sure.

However, sometimes during school holidays, perhaps when Dad was working in a particularly obscure area in the Dales, we'd agree to eat our main meal in the evening. This meant that the mother and I would have little-dinner in the middle of the day - to be followed, of course, by dinner-for-tea in the evening. I remember bread, cheese and dates being a staple of little-dinner; it's still one of my favourite snack-meals, and I've no idea why I don't eat it more often.

I don't know where the name little-dinner came from; lunch was a word which would not enter my vocabulary until I went to secondary school, where we had a lunch hour at 12:45 instead of dinnertime at 12. Maybe it was me, with a toddler's limited word-count, guessing at a name. Maybe it was the mother mucking about and mistranslating petit-déjuner. It's a phrase I've not heard in a long time. Now that I don't live with my parents I don't know if they still have the conversation about whether it would be more convenient to have dinner-for-tea on a particular day.

For some reason I always remember little-dinner as a quiet affair, with not even the radio on. As a family, we are all uncivilised enough to read at mealtimes, so meals often passed in companionable silence. Even when Ladybirds were all I could manage, I remember reading while eating; many of my childhood books have jam-stains on the pages. I was always taught that - like one holds one's knife in one's right hand - bread and so on should be picked up in the left. Even now I instinctively hold a book in my right hand to leave the left free.

So I sat in the quiet kitchen by myself, with my whodunnit and my dates, and had my little-dinner. It's a very civilised way to spend an hour in the middle of the day.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

How strange: I always hold the book in my left hand and eat (as well as knife) with my right.

Poll required methinks!

[venta.livejournal.com]

I think I enquired about that here once before. I don't believe I managed to chase up a single other person who was taught that holding your bread in the left hand is "correct"[*] - although the mother swears that she didn't make it up.

In these days, of course, eating and mousing with different hands is terribly convenient :) Though I fail, because I do both with my left hand.

[*] It clearly is correct, or your side-plate would be on your right ;)

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

The plate being on your left also means that if you're right-handed you're only crowding yourself (reaching over your own meal) when you butter your roll, though, rather than waving a knife in the direction of your right-hand neighbour. I would have to move my side-plate away from me to be comfortable if it were on my right, taking up more space than if I reach across to my left.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's what I thought was the reason. But it might well be post-hoc reationalization...

I forgot to ask, are the dates taken alongside the bread and cheese in one exciting mouthful, or afterwards? Dates were trmendously exotic in my childhood (we only had them at Christmas, and then strictly rationed to one a day), so the idea of having them as part of a mundane bread-and-cheese meal is intriguing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I forgot to ask, are the dates taken alongside the bread and cheese in one exciting mouthful, or afterwards?

I'd say alongside, usually. Today, though, the cheese was the end of a bit of stilton-with-apricots and so it was afterwards as they didn't go so well together.

I should add that these are dried dates, not the fat, squashy, sticky sort which I associate with Christmas.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Cheese & dried dates is a favourite snack combo for me... in fact, I might have that as a post-workout snack today. I now have organic goat's Camembert and organic dates in the house, thanks to a Suma delivery this afternoon.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

My mum decided that there would never be dates, because she personally didn't like them. This means that I now love them. This was also the case for crisps, but I got over those, whereas I don't think you can get over dates.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm... so, if there's one particular thing you don't have when little, you develop a taste for it when older. That seems perfectly reasonable.

On the other hand, taken to extremes, that suggests that a kid raised entirely on junkfood and ready meals will love fresh fruit and veg in later life. I'm not sure that works. I wonder where the balance point is ?

I suppose it could just be that dates are brilliant.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Mouse in right hand, therefore I eat with my left!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

When I'm eating is when keyboard shortcuts come into their own. Fortunately I have quite a big reach.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I don't think I'm co-ordinated enough to eat with my left hand alone, come to think of it.

We had this little-dinner type of thing quite a lot, and usually read over it too, but we always had Radio 4 or Radio Oxford [which was quite cool in the period I'm thinking of] on as well. Dates were never part of it though - apples, usually straight from our trees (or the stored ones from the previous summer if none of them were in season) accompanied our bread and cheese. Maybe tomatoes from the garden too.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

As a family, we are all uncivilised enough to read at mealtimes, so meals often passed in companionable silence.

Oh, that sounds brilliant. Ours were always horrendous stiff, bored, angry, scared, resentful affairs. One of other of the parents was usually in a bad mood (which of course was likely to trigger the other one). When it was Dad we were extra quiet due to his tendency to lash out at random (an elbow on the table sometimes resulted in said elbow being banged down hard *on* the table, and then I would be fuming and upset all at once - but quietly). Even if they were in good moods my sister and usually started off resentful at having been dragged away from something we wanted to do in order to sit up at the table. Meals involved being made to eat things you hated and stay there, bored to tears, till the parents were prepared to let you go. They believed firmly in 'family mealtimes', but made them as miserable an experience as possible. It was a long time before I was able to think of sitting down for dinner with a family as something which could be enjoyable. I still don't like to sit at a table when I'm eating on my own. I think of dining rooms as cold, sad places.

Wow, that was depressing, eh?

Anyway, I tend to eat with fork in right hand and book in left.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was depressing, eh?

Not depressing as such, just sad, really. Sitting round a table should be a fun, companionable thing and I'm amazed that so many people seem to have had quite the opposite experience. I don't think I realised until relatively recently how lucky I was.

My mother's a great cook, our dining room was really the room we lived in (so heated, while the rarely-used front room stayed chilly) and while reading was acceptable we also enjoyed (and still do) talking to each other. I like eating, so rarely resent having to stop what I'm doing for it.

But having heard other people's anecdotes of "family mealtimes" I can see why this isn't always the case. I just end up feeling sorry for people and wanting to invite them round for dinner :)

Anyway, I tend to eat with fork in right hand and book in left.

I can do that too - and often do these days. But when I was growing up I guess we had sandwichy meals more often than fork-only meals. Fork-only was reserved for things like curry or pasta, and we more commonly had meals which required knife-action to render them tractable.

[(Anonymous)]

I just end up feeling sorry for people and wanting to invite them round for dinner :)


Form an orderly queue.....behind me!

W

[lathany.livejournal.com]

I don't remember ever being allowed to read at the table (or, come to that, trying to), but family meal was usually pretty informal.

Bea and I have been known to play electronic games at the table after we've finished eating and before everyone else has. I think if either child wanted to bring a book to the table, that would be fine (although we might stop them if we had company, just not to offend the company).