written by Pamela McDonald, NP |  

In these hectic times , eating nothing or grabbing something on the go are the two choices often facing us. Not eating when you need to is not healthy, but there is also a difference between consuming food and dining. Eating, ingesting, food intake, consumption, dining, snacking, eating on the run, fast food, convenience foods, and food “to go” are just some of the many descriptions for the modern culinary experience. As you can see, most of the latter descriptions are about saving time.

For many of us, gone are the days of eating at home, or packing a small parcel of food prepared at home to take with us on a journey. In the not-so-distant past, there were few restaurants and no fast food outlets, and the home-prepared meal was about all that was available. Home cooking was an art and displayed daily. Many times the meal served was a cherished event, especially the evening dinner , because it was a family’s main social activity centered on a pleasurable dining experience.

Learning from Our Past

For many centuries, food preparation has been a primary activity in the center of daily life. Sometimes, it was also a major form of entertainment. It may have begun with the hunt of the day, which many times supplied the main dish. Collecting flowers and vegetables from the garden or hothouse and afternoonwalks down to the local farmhouse or shops to get milk, meat, cheese, or eggs were all part of the meal preparation experiences of the past.

 The English trend of entertaining with afternoon tea at 3:00 started inthe late 1700s, when dinner typically was served from 7:00 to 8:30. Because people grew hungry during the long stint between lunch and dinner, it became common to serve a light afternoon snack with tea. Anna Marie Stanhope, Queen Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, later began the practice of inviting friends for tea and is often credited with turning this practice into a social event for many middle and upper class households.

As the popularity of afternoon tea grew, the English china pottery industry began with the discovery of English china clay. This led to the growth of the china pottery industry by William Adams & Sons, Spode, Wedgwood, Denby, followed by such artistic delights as Edinburgh and Waterford crystal glasses and England’s famous Sheffield sterling silver cutlery.

Formal gatherings that revolved around this afternoon tea, as well as the evening meal, became an established pattern, and the tea and dinner table were transformed into an art form. Eventually this major form of entertaining evolved into more of a family tradition. My family followed this tradition as I grew up in Cornwall, where afternoon tea had taken on cultural as well as economical importance. Besides being the home of the copper and tin mining industries and a strong and vibrant fishing industry, Cornwall is the major source of English china clay and is home of the high-class Cornish Cream Tea, “The Best...