THE BEST MEAL OF THE DAY!

Dunstan Times, Issue 3382, 11 July 1927, Page 8

THE BEST MEAL OF THE DAY!

(By Dion Clayton Oalthrop.) There is something to be said for the first, for the cup of tea and bread-and-butter in bed. But no, perhaps you rule that out. It spoils your breakfast. * , A crisp new roll, a cup of g°od ■strong coffee, and an orange. Ur something more substantial, something to begin the day on. Tea, toast, marmalade, some portion of the fruitful pig, and the energetic hen? Porridge, with either cream, salt or treacle. Ui do you favor the real, old-fashioned breakfast, which British people crave for on the Continent? Eggs, dined and salted fish, cold ham, grilled chicken: you know the menu well; with bread and honey, something sweet to top up with. , . , . Fruit always. An apple a-day keeps the doctor away. (Does it?) Possibly you are a Spartan: cold bath, weak tea, and dry toast. .1 never touch breakfast.” How many people say that! Then there comes that snack valued by some, to others anathema. ‘‘The elevens,” it is called. A piece of cake and a glass of wine; a biscuit and cheese and a glass of beer. Spoils lunch, does it? Very well, let us to lunch. . , , Is it to be at twelve o clock, _ seeing [that we had a light breakfast; is it to be a midday dinner, or just something cold, or a stand-up lunch, or something brought up on a tray ? —a woman s meal that, I think. The morning’s work is over. What about a cocktail, or a sherry-and-bit-ters, and then a look at the menu—or do you prefer to call it the bill-ot-fare? . , French or English? A sardine, iadishes, pickled herring, little bits and pieces, or straight on to soup, fish and joint? Is it to be what wc call a square meal ? It needs considering Cold roast beef, pickles, bread and cheese and celery —not so bad; but we must not forget the fried sole, chicken and omelette, with, perhaps, a glass ot white wine. Or do we take a woman s shopping lunch of milk and confectionery? Women don’t care for food, so they say; they can do a strenuous morning’s shopping on buns and cones but a large lunch makes them feel sleepv. 1 believe they do it on purpose to make men feel greedy. Women, bless tnem, get in little backhanders bn men every now and again. Perhaps you have a “sweet tooth r If so, it’s a case of a chocolate or two —or six, at odd intervals. Tea, ‘lo five o’clock,’ as the Freno.i say: thats the woman’s meal. “Im dying for a cup of tea;” _ I don’t know where the phrase originated about “dropping in,” but it is right for teatime. Muffins and crumpets; who invented the words? They sound like something out of Dickensso does a Sally T.unn or a Bath Oliver. But there they are, a trade by themselves, coming to the door under a green baize cloth and! suggesting cosiness and a good fire. Tea has an Art all to itself: trays, tables, cups and saucers, every sort ot cake hot and cold, and sometimes, in less refined circles, watercress or some ether “relish.” , What would England do without tea The cup that cheers. Women used! to—perhaps they do now —carry apparatus for tea-making whenever they went abroad; spirit-lamps and kettles with a hinged handle, and tea tied up in little muslin sacks. You never see anybody carting coffee about And after" tea, dinner. That gives us pause. The other meals are just meals; dinner needs consideration. In other days, what didn’t we eat. It seems hardly credible that we managed to get through, but there stands Mrs Bee ton, guardian of the British tummy, advising us to feast. Who lias a “remove” now? A glass; of sherry, white wine, of course, with clear soup. Always clear *soup for a dinner-party. Then turbot of salmon, then the roast; saddle of mutton, I think, with red-currant jelly. The bird then followed by tipsy-cakc, beloved of teetotallers'; after that a savoury: this is years before the sorbet and the Russian cigarette. And after that the dessert and the port, king of wines, Marsala, and brown sherry, Bristol milk. The ladies leave, the wine goes round with the sun, and, then, “Shall we join the ladies?” Wait. Wc have yet one more meal, and some would say it was the best of the lot. It is, at its best, breakfast at night, with the difference of the liquid refreshment; champagne and scrambled eggs; whisky-and-soda and devilled bones; beer and Welsh rarebit, or Scotch woodcock. And so to bed. Not that we do as our grandfathers advised ns to db, “After dinner rest a while, after supper walk a mile”—and jolly sound advice it was, too. But What about ai hunk of cheese, the kissing-crust of a new loaf, a tankard of cold ale, and a few spring onions outside an old country pub, with thrushes singing and carts; lumbering past, and away in, the distance the sound of scything? Can you beat it?