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Meals: Customs / Scheduling / Naming

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Rerenny

Justified & Ancient
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Nov 8, 2014
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Also, not so much a saying, more something written in somebody's letter from his mum (I can't remember who, some eminient Victorian): don't eat large meals late in the day. So "dinner" really should be eaten at "lunch" time, and only a light supper should be eaten at modern times dinner hour
 
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Yep, it is best not to eat a large meal in the evening and best not to eat after about 7pm. Gives the body a chance to digest the food before bedtime.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yep, it is best not to eat a large meal in the evening and best not to eat after about 7pm. Gives the body a chance to digest the food before bedtime.
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Quite right, wise Sir Knight. Unless you have particularly animated nightmares, you're not going to wear off that vast pasta meal overnight!
 
Back in the sixties where people were doing manual labour, it was 4 meals a day.
A generous breakfast. Elevenses. The dinner which could be meat and two veg with a stodgy pudding and custard for sweet. Then home for tea - which was probably the same and then a short break before supper which was more of a savoury snack like cheese on toast. Maybe a pint or three down the pub too.

A gazillion calories but they walked to work and led active working lives in hard manufacturing industries. Many of them smoked like chimneys but the missing ingredient then was the amount of sugar now added and used to make even basic food taste good.

Seriously. Look at the labels.
I looked at the sugar in cream today.
Ordinary double cream... 1.9g per 100ml
Luxury clotted cream... 2.9g per 100ml
Madagascan Vanilla cream... 6.9g per 100ml.
 
I vaguely thought that a tea towel had something to do with tea, but couldn't imagine what.
 
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Endlessly Amazed said:
I vaguely thought that a tea towel had something to do with tea, but couldn't imagine what.
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Tea is what posh English people call the third meal of the day, breakfast, dinner and tea, as well as the national drink, some folks have a special tea service, posh plates, cups, saucers etc, which are traditionally made of fine bone china, so when drying them after washing them up, a soft cotton 'tea towel' was used, the name just stuck, we also have 'afternoon tea' which places like The Savoy and The Ritz still do, which is a selection of delicate sandwichs (cucumber with crusts removed, traditionally) and delicate pastries and cakes, served, of course, with a pot of tea.
 
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Souleater said:
Tea is what posh English people call the third meal of the day, breakfast, dinner and tea, as well as the national drink, some folks have a special tea service, posh plates, cups, saucers etc, which are traditionally made of fine bone china, so when drying them after washing them up, a soft cotton 'tea towel' was used, the name just stuck, we also have 'afternoon tea' which places like The Savoy and The Ritz still do, which is a selection of delicate sandwichs (cucumber with crusts removed, traditionally) and delicate pastries and cakes, served, of course, with a pot of tea.
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Thanks, Souleater. What happened to lunch and supper? I shall add tea to my feeding schedule, oh dear, there are only 24 hours in a day to eat.
 
pandacracker said:
I'm not posh but I believe it's breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Afternoon tea is explained here and the difference between it and High Tea can be found here.

Both have nice pictures of cakes :p
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Wow! I don't know if my response should be huba-huba or oink oink or yum-yum or ..
In any case, I shall add it to my daily routine.
 
pandacracker said:
the difference between it and High Tea can be found here.
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That account misses out the way that working-class Dinner was taken in the middle of the day. Many workers would live locally enough to go home for a hot meal, as did many school-children. We thought we were becoming quite sophisticated, when our Dinner shifted to the evenings but it was necessitated, when dad no longer worked in the town. Lunch-hour was long enough to allow for a ten-minute walk home and back to work, or school. It did place the onus on the housewife to have this main meal ready promptly, so it was a traditional source of pride. People were not up late, when there was an early start; traditionally, in the winter especially, it was bedtime, when the light faded! :omr:
 
Rural farming background, I grew up with breakfast (am), dinner (noonish) and supper (pm). Moving into urban living (only 15 km distance), it is now breakfast, lunch and dinner. I still double check when my mom invites me for a family dinner if she means noonish or late afternoon (5 or 6ish).
 
JamesWhitehead said:
That account misses out the way that working-class Dinner was taken in the middle of the day. Many workers would live locally enough to go home for a hot meal, as did many school-children. We thought we were becoming quite sophisticated, when our Dinner shifted to the evenings but it was necessitated, when dad no longer worked in the town. Lunch-hour was long enough to allow for a ten-minute walk home and back to work, or school. It did place the onus on the housewife to have this main meal ready promptly, so it was a traditional source of pride. People were not up late, when there was an early start; traditionally, in the winter especially, it was bedtime, when the light faded! :omr:
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Curiously, since I've been working from home, I've cut out lunch completely.
Have a decent breakfast around 08:00, then nothing, except maybe a few nuts until dinner around 18:30.
Still managed to put on weight during lockdown though.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
That account misses out the way that working-class Dinner was taken in the middle of the day. Many workers would live locally enough to go home for a hot meal, as did many school-children. We thought we were becoming quite sophisticated, when our Dinner shifted to the evenings but it was necessitated, when dad no longer worked in the town. Lunch-hour was long enough to allow for a ten-minute walk home and back to work, or school. It did place the onus on the housewife to have this main meal ready promptly, so it was a traditional source of pride. People were not up late, when there was an early start; traditionally, in the winter especially, it was bedtime, when the light faded! :omr:
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You never told me you're working class? .. sorry but my father says we're not allowed to play together anymore.
 
Swifty said:
I was raised with it being called breakfast, lunch then tea .. except when I was at school because it was dinner time and the dinner ladies.
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Isn't it a northern thing to refer to lunch as dinner?
Being from Cornwall, I guess you can't get much further south in the UK and dinner was always our evening meal, with tea meaning a cup of tea and perhaps a biscuit.
BUT, weirdly, at school we did call the catering staff "dinner ladies" (and yet, those of us who took our own food carried it in a lunchbox, never a dinnerbox).
 
For The Queen it is Breakfast, Lunch, Afternoon Tea, and Dinner;
"....the Queen has four meals a day - but only eats small portions at each. ....... breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner."
"HRH typically starts with a simple cup of tea and biscuits, followed by a bowl of cereal."
"...a lunch of grilled fish with wilted spinach or courgettes.......She is also partial to a simple grilled chicken with salad"
"....afternoon tea....always has scones with jam and clotted cream - and she puts jam on first..."
"...The queen had 20 chefs at the royal kitchen ..... the head chef would provide the Queen with a menu twice a week and then she could choose meals to her liking."

"...the Queen never directly said she didn’t enjoy a meal, she would leave a message in a notebook for the staff. “She had a little book on her desk and she would just put a note in there saying ‘I don't want this again’ or something like that,” "

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...ood-diet-elizabeth-royal-family-a9687656.html
 
I grew up in a middle-class household in the northwest of England.For us it was strictly Breakfast -Dinner - Tea, both at home and at school. The word `supper` was given the odd mention - but that meant a mug of coca before going to bed.

The word `lunch` was only ever uttered in relation to `lunch-box` - ie a few sanwhiches in a plastic container.

Then - sometime in the late Eighties, I think - the word `lunch` started to be used in my environment (which was then still the North for me). This felt like some sort of betrayal to my mind. To this day, whenever I hear the word `lunch` I get a mental association of a lunchbox - and with crappy stale sandwiches instead of a hot meal. It's most unappetising and is enough to put me off my dinner.
 
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blessmycottonsocks said:
Isn't it a northern thing to refer to lunch as dinner?
Being from Cornwall, I guess you can't get much further south in the UK and dinner was always our evening meal, with tea meaning a cup of tea and perhaps a biscuit.
BUT, weirdly, at school we did call the catering staff "dinner ladies" (and yet, those of us who took our own food carried it in a lunchbox, never a dinnerbox).
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For my, coming from 'daan saaf' it depends on the day, monday to saturday dinner is always the evening meal, on sundays, when i go to my folks for dinner, it is always at lunch time :)
 
Souleater said:
For my, coming from 'daan saaf' it depends on the day, monday to saturday dinner is always the evening meal, on sundays, when i go to my folks for dinner, it is always at lunch time :)
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Your mention of "daan saaf" reminded me that one of my childhood friends was from a cockney geezer background. His family had moved down from East London and I can picture his mother, standing outside her front door, hair in curlers and cigarette in hand, yelling "Mark! Get in here now - your fackin tea's ready!".
"Oh just another 10 minutes ma!" he replied.
As she advanced, menacingly towards us, I think I said "you'd better go Mark. It's getting near my dinnertime too anyway."
 
Souleater said:
For my, coming from 'daan saaf' it depends on the day, monday to saturday dinner is always the evening meal, on sundays, when i go to my folks for dinner, it is always at lunch time :)
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I'm in the West Midlands and it's always been Breakfast, Dinner, Tea, Supper here :)

And we had Dinner Ladies at school! XD
 
SketchyMagpie said:
I'm in the West Midlands and it's always been Breakfast, Dinner, Tea, Supper here :)
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Same for me, and I'm a soft Southerner.
My Mum's parents were from 'oop North' and my Dad's parents were from 'far South', and neither of them used the term 'lunch'.
I have adopted the use of 'lunch' as everybody else seems to use it.
 
If anyone's interested, the French terms are:

Breakfast = petit-déjeuner
Lunch = déjeuner
Tea = goûter
Dinner = dîner

When my wife looks after our little grandson, she insists that he has his goûter around 16:00, before his dîner a couple of hours later.
 
I don't know where this comes from but I do think of Dinner as "Lunch" if I'm not eating at home or in a regular setting like work or school. So if I go out on my bike and take some sarnies and a bag of crisps with me, I'll think of that as a packed lunch or if I go out to a cafe or something. But if I'm not "eating out" relative to the norm, it's dinner.
 
Always breakfast - lunch - dinner for me, although tea was the term commonly used for the evening meal in the West of Scotland. For me, supper was always the light snack I would have before going to bed.
 
SketchyMagpie said:
I don't know where this comes from but I do think of Dinner as "Lunch" if I'm not eating at home or in a regular setting like work or school. So if I go out on my bike and take some sarnies and a bag of crisps with me, I'll think of that as a packed lunch or if I go out to a cafe or something.
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Yes - I think of 'dinner' as being more substantial than 'lunch'.
 
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