Since my life is more than shoes...

I thought I'd share it with you

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Dinner vs. Supper from the girl with the dining room project

Ok, I've been a little lax lately, but I've been working hard and making a gazillion Christmas ornaments for my family. Anyway, here's what I know about dinner, supper, and lunch...

Lunch is short for luncheon, which my gradmother still calls it - it used to be just a light meal with little sandwiches and tea (kind of like tea time in England, I'd imagine). So, someone couldn't really invite you for "Sunday lunch" unless you were just going to have sandwiches.

As a result, you would be invited for "Sunday dinner" (also what my grandmother calls it). Dinner typically involves a cooked meal and includes some sort of large meat-like item, whether it's ham, beef, or tofu (just kidding on the tofu, although I guess it's possible). Normally this type of dinner is served on a weekend, although it used to be served all throughout the week as the one hot meal of the day. In Europe, or Germany anyway, they still do this - we were given 1 1/2 hours between classes so that we could have a hot meal for lunch. Many of my friends even came home and cooked for lunch.

This brings us to supper - after eating a hot dinner, you don't need to have a huge roast beef for dinner, so you might have lighter fare, whether sandwiches, leftovers, etc. "In the old days" supper was not what many of us think supper is today (a hot meal eaten in the evening), but rather what I just described. In Germany, this often consisted of bread, cold sausage or other "lunch meat," cheese, and something spread with nutella.

So Jimmy, I bet if you asked your friends in the cove what they called their weekday noon meal, they'd call it lunch (unless they work where you work, where you get your free hot meal at lunchtime). And, I'd be willing to bet that when you were asked to dinner at what you consider lunchtime, it was on a weekend.