What on earth is this mealtime snobbery about?

[Diemme]

At 6.45 this evening, DH and I went to sit outside at front of the house to have a coffee and enjoy the last of the sun - we live in a close with benches outside the houses. Almost immediately our neighbours came back from a dog walk. They chatted for a few minutes and then she said she was going in to make dinner. I mentioned just in small talk that we'd already eaten. And I swear she did a head tilt and tinkly laugh as she said gosh that's early. Then she went inside and her husband arranged his face in a sort of patronising / pitiful expression and asked why we'd eaten so early. It's not just them, ive come across it loads of times. It's as if there's a bizarre sense of superiority to eating at 8 rather than say 6.

It’s when they call it “Supper” that really winds me up. It’s Tea, or Dinner. Saying you eat “Supper” means you have ideas of grandeur! Lol!

IMO Dinner is the main meal of the day. So if you eat this at lunchtime you have tea or supper in the evening. Unless you is greedy pigs and have dinner style quantities x2 per day.

Is it because there’s this idea that eating later is seen as more ‘continental’ and therefore more ‘cultured’? It’s a bit of a kind of ‘oh look at those poor little people so unworldly’ 😒

We usually eat between 5.30 and 6 with the baby. Means we can get him in bed and have the house reasonably organised by 7, and then have the evening free to enjoy ourselves. Although we are usually in bed by 9.30 as we are up so early 😂

@Diemme

Tomorrow (weather permitting) I suggest you and DH both sit with your crack pipes and a Baggy of rocks swigging from a bottle of white lightening and see if their reaction is any different 😂

Your choice what time you eat, not their business !

here in Trumpville they call it the 'Blue Rinse Special' - reduced price dinner served between 4 and 6, or thereabouts. Love that!

I eat dinner at around 7:15 most nights. Only because I get in at 7:00 ish and DH has it just about ready to eat, after my obligatory turn about the neighborhood to smoke clear my head from the day.

Growing up we had tea, and supper before bed. My DM loved her supper. She'd get a twinkle in her eye, and say "Ooh, do you fancy some cheese on toast" or the like. With cocoa as kids, coffee as grownups. It was entirely unnecessary, but so nice. I miss that. Am still terribly fat, even without my 4th meal of the day.

Ok I'm totally not buying the front garden snobbery. We've got a lovely bench on a patch of grass and we were drinking our coffee out of nice white mugs. Must have looked the picture of poshness. And just to clarify I'm a) not Scottish and b) fatter than my neighbours.

I would like to eat supper later in the evening however for health reasons we eat earlier and then enjoy an evening walk which a PP mentioned is good for weight and blood sugar levels.

I like to stack the dishwasher and tidy the kitchen and announce kitchen closed by 7pm at the latest, if we had staff I suppose we could enjoy supper at 9pm.

And just to clarify I'm a) not Scottish and b) fatter than my neighbours.

I am Scottish and fatter than my neighbors. I have no lovely bench on my patch of grass though :)

I’m on leave this week, which gives us more flexibility. The kids had breakfast at 7:30ish, we all had bacon and egg muffins around 10:30, and our final meal at 4:30 (with dessert at 6:30). We had appointments around lunchtime, so this is what fitted today, other days we’ll eat at totally different times. This probably seems quite strange to some, but as long as everyone eats healthily and sufficiently then I’m not convinced of the need to stick to set mealtimes.

I cannot understand how people are not passing out if they eat dinner that late. My lunch hour is 1pm. I'm starving by the 5pm train home!!

My grandparents were “continental” and my grandad had a professional job, although his work was only 10 minutes drive from home. The main meal there was actually at lunchtime. He’d get a full hour for lunch and my grandma would cook in the morning. We’d have 3 courses at noon everyday. (Kids often used to go home for lunch there too). He’d then get home around 5:30 and we would have a light evening meal then of say bread and jam, or various cheeses, ham etc. Then maybe a bit of fruit or a couple of biscuits before bed. Other relatives who live there seemed to have done the same. Probably because they all live close to their jobs and get a proper lunch break. I actually like that way the best but it isn’t practical for most of us.

My grandmother had the dinner on the table at 4:45pm, ready for when my grandfather walked through the door after work. My mum always has dinner around 6-6:30 and thinks we 'eat late', because we tend to eat between 7-7:30. Sometimes we eat earlier - during school holidays I am off work so we eat anytime from lunchtime onwards, but sometimes it's later, depending on what else we are doing.
I tend to assume people eat at a time that's suits their lifestyle and tine of life - earlier when the children are young or you are much older, later when you are working and get home later. Don't really understand why anyone would be snobby about it.

@PositiveVibez
What are you havering about? Where do you park? On the street!
Traditional tenements with a close we’re not built to accommodate cars, they often have a small fenced in front garden; that’s where the OP will be sitting. For someone who says she’s lived in a close you’re confusing out the front of there with big houses, driveways and garages?? 😉

My lunch hour is 1pm

I’m a SAHM currently but even when working I didn’t have a ‘lunch hour’. I was obviously entitled to a lunch break but it wasn’t a set time, just whenever I fit it around meetings etc. I usually went for a quick walk and a sandwich at around 3pm.
Nowadays I eat lunch any time between 2 and 4. We lived in Spain for a while and it was just a habit we got into.

@Diemme
Maybe they thought you were “proper hardcore” drinking caffeine after midday !😂 probably scared them 😂😂

Please don’t ever change you and your eating times and ‘sod them’ basically !

Just ignore it.

Who makes the 'rules' as to when neighbours should eat? Duh ?

My husband used to work shifts so mealtimes were 'flexible.'

When I was a kid my cousin lived across the road from us. My mam always made tea early, because I had younger siblings. So cousin would make sure she was at out for tea. Her mam used to make tea later when her husband was in from work and had had a drink or 2, so about 7.30pm compared to 5.30pm. So I used to make sure I was at theirs for 7.30pm ish. We spent 2 years having 2 teas, and on a sunday we had ours for 1pm, auntie did hers for 3pm, then 2 lots of jam sarnies and cakes for tea.

This was in the 80s in northern England and everyone was skint so portions (especially for girl children) were tiny.

Now she lives just down the road from me. She quite often calls in at 9am ish the dsy after I have cooked something like lasagne or curry as she knows I cook extra for the freezer and will have just shoved the big pot in the fridge to portion up the next day. Takes a Tupperware dish for her tea 😂😂😂.

Think that's the only times someone elses mealtimes matter to someone else. If there is a good chance you will benefit from it. 😂😂😂

I am up at 6am I have breakfast by 8 and lunch around 1pm. Dinner for me is between 6-7pm on a non work day. On days I work I don't get in till 6.30pm and need to feed the kids first ( although working on getting dd to eat herself), so we eat around 7.30pm usually. Any later than 8pm for me and the kids start looking tasty! I don't snack in the evening as I am usually burnt out by 10pm.

My in laws eat between 8 and 9pm but they have breakfast at 12 and lunch at 4pm so for them that makes sense. It means I am ravenous if I go over to theirs for dinner, I have learnt to have some fruit before to keep me going.

I always think people think they are being all classy and Mediterranean if they eat later in the evening . You know , reminds them of the lovely holidays outside of Nice .

There’s a long tradition of it being viewed as more fashionable (and more urban) to eat dinner later, originally presumably because it was more expensive for servants to have to cook and serve by candle or lamplight rather than daylight, so it showed you had cash to spend on artificial lighting.

You see it in Jane Austen’s novels, where when you had dinner was not just about personal inclination — older and more rural people like the older Musgroves in Persuasion eat at three or so in the afternoon, while young, fashionable ‘town’ types like the Bingleys keep London hours even in the country, and eat much later, and Caroline Bingley or the Crawfords would sneer at ‘country hours’.

And not just dinner. When Lizzie Bennet walks over to Netherfield where Jane has been taken ill, she gets the note at the end of the Longbourn breakfast, has time to get ready, walk three cross-country miles in mud, and still arrives as the fashionable Bingleys re only beginning breakfast. Part of Caroline Bingley’s sneer about it is not just that Lizzie is muddy and untidy, it’s that it’s hick to have finished breakfast so early.

I thinks it’s much more complicated than posh or not posh etc. I think there is a north/south difference, a working class vs professional difference and an upbringing bit of social class too.

At the end of the day who really cares, we all choose what we want and naturally hate the other choices, my Yorkshire parents always had dinner (lunch) and tea (supper) and then a snack that they called supper. It became confusing when we moved south and my friends thought that we were odd.

Supper is not posh to most southerners, dinner is posh.

We eat supper at 8, it’s normal for us but we are all working until 7pm, it’s what we like so there is no right and wrong.

For everyone that eats before 6pm my only curiosity would be what sort of job do you have that lets you leave in the middle of the afternoon to eat so early.

It doesn't bother me when people eat or whether they call it tea, dinner or supper !

Now, I do like the word "supper". My grandparents used it. They were working class. He was a labourer, she was a homemaker, they had a massive kitchen garden that they largely lived off. They ate their evening meal at 5/5:30 when he came home from work. "Supper" to me will always be my grandmother's humble and bountiful kitchen table full of garden produce and happy laughter. Don't let anyone else take your happiness from you, likewise, let them live their lives. If they are the sneering type so be it.

What on earth is wrong with calling it supper? Where I live, tea is a drink and dinner is a meal you go out for or host people at. Bog-standard evening meal on a weekday is supper.

Oh, and it's at 7.30pm or later. I don't even leave the office until 6 so it's a purely practical consideration there. I wouldn't be hungry that early either!

If you eat that early it is seen as 'tea', not 'dinner'. To some that is a huge difference.