Monday, April 22, 2013

Lunch-Dinner-Supper

My husband Larry is always teasing me because I use the words dinner and supper interchangeably when referring to our evening meal.  Larry grew up saying dinner, while my family always called it supper, so if I call Larry to supper, he invariably calls back that he'll be there for dinner in a minute. The what-to-call-our-meals issue came up again just last week when reading, of all things, a murder mystery.  One of the characters in the story explained that breakfast, dinner and supper were the three meals of the day in the South, while breakfast, lunch and dinner were the names for those same three meals in the North.  Larry grew up in Iowa and I in Wisconsin, so we can't very well use the North-South excuse.  There's something comforting for me to call our last meal of the day supper.  However, when I'm in the company of others, I rapidly conform to calling it dinner to avoid confusion or to sound as if I forgot my education.  If I were to put an identity to it, Larry and I probably eat dinner, rather than supper, for our meal is often light and vegan.  When I think of a supper, I think of a hearty, meat-and-potatoes sort of affair or a potluck.  Whether we're dining on lunch or dinner, dinner or supper, the blessing in it all is that we have food to consume and healthy food to boot.  It really doesn't matter what you call it, so long as you enjoy the nourishment, grateful to those who grew it, partaking it alone or in the company of others.

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