breakfast and whatnot

[lobelia321]

On Saturday, I met a Canadian chap at a garden party and he said 'whatnot'. Whatnot! That is what Rodney McKay says in t'TV series Stargate Atlantis! And he's Canadian! So. Whatever whatnot.

Breakfast:
2 bagels, one cinnamon and raisin, one plain. Each spread with butter, quark and either bitter marmalade thick-cut or bramble jelly.
2 cups of coffee, black, one sugar each.

Elevenses:
None today!!

Lunch:
1 heated-up tomato soup wot i made yesterday. Ingredients: onion, garlic, passata, tomatoes from tin, basil, salt, pepper.
1 heated-up mushroom rice wot i made day before yesterday.
3 dark-rye ryvita slices with butter, emmental cheese, horseradish cream and sliced gherkin (my current lust food!).
1 mug of black tea.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

i'm thinking 'whatnot' might be colonial english. i say 'whatnot.' singapore was a british colony. when i say whatnot here, my colleagues think it's quaint.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I love whatnot! I love it. It is quaint! And I love it.

*needs a whatnot icon*

Somehow the word reminds me of the word 'ha-ha'.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Tell me about elevenses! And also about tea (the meal, not the drink)! I eat the same meals every day. I need some new meals.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Elevenses are something the English (I am not English, I just live here, *g*, I adapt and adopt) partake of at around eleven o'clock in the morning. It is generally tea (or similar) and some sort of little sweet snack, like a Danish. I have ryvitas with emmental cheese.

Tea: I have had many conversations about this word. It generally refers to the meal that is eaten in the evening, and it is generally eaten between six and seven. It is often what I would call a warm supper. If it is a more formal meal with several courses and guests, it tends to be called 'dinner'.

Lunch is eaten at lunch time except if you live in the North when dinner is eaten at lunch time. Except when you're in the North and your dinner is in a lunch bag in which case it is called lunch. Schoolchildren take a packed lunch to school but if they have a hot meal in the school cafeteria, this is called school dinner and the people who serve said meals are called dinner ladies.

There is also a thing called 'high tea'. This is taken between four and five pm and consists of tea, scones, sandwiches with the crusts cut off and with cucumber and watercress and suchlike, a tea cake. I would dearly like to have high tea at the Ritz in London one day. It is very posh, I hear.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Huh! In North Carolina, when I was growing up, 'dinner' was the big meal of the day, and the word 'dinner' told you nothing at all about what time of day the meal was eaten.

Country people like my grandparents ate 'dinner' at midday and 'supper' in the evening. City people like my parents did that only on Christmas and Easter and occasionally on Sunday; otherwise, we ate 'lunch' at midday and 'dinner' in the evening.

Sounds like Brits are using the word 'tea' the way Southern Americans would use 'supper,' to mean 'the evening meal on a day when you've had your bigger meal at midday.'

I always imagined tea as an additional small meal or big snack eaten in the middle of the afternoon, for people who were doing the European thing and not having dinner until late in the evening. I'm a little disappointed that that's not the case. It seems very civilized.

I once read a Wodehouse story where Jeeves' brilliant solution to Bertie's romantic problems revolved around the idea that any woman can skip lunch without a qualm, but if you made her skip tea, it made her very cranky indeed.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Brits are using the word 'tea' the way Southern Americans would use 'supper,' to mean 'the evening meal on a day when you've had your bigger meal at midday.'
No, it is very confusing! The Brits use 'tea' to mean the evening meal and that may well be, and probably is, their main meal, as they tend to have only a sandwich or a salad at lunchtime (unless they are school children and/or college lecturers in Oxbridge in which case they are too posh for tea and always have lunch and dinner and/or it's Christmas -- nobody has Christmas tea!). It is complicated by class although many English people would deny this. Who knows what the Welsh and the Scots do.

I always imagined tea as an additional small meal or big snack eaten in the middle of the afternoon, for people who were doing the European thing and not having dinner until late in the evening.
The English do not do the continental European thing at all! I experienced the late eatings in Italy and Spain and this is not at all what happens here in t'UK! I have no idea what the Spaniards et al. do to sustain their bellies until their almost-midnight meal. Hang on, the Spaniards possibly eat tapas in a bar (yum yum).

My Karl lakritz seems to be the only food icon I have at the moment... *g*