Eating Out

I love eating out almost as much as I love cooking.  And living in London as I do, I'm lucky enough to have an amazing array of restaurants within easy reach offering me all types of food.  
And it's not just dining in fine establishments - which to be honest I hardly ever do - which I enjoy.  I love cafes, pub food, pizza chains and so on.  It's partly the social element - since my eating out in London is always with friends or family - but also the enjoyment of having someone cook (and perhaps more importantly wash up and tidy away!) for me.

Thinking back over the posts I have written I realise there have been very references to eating out.  Shakespeare's comic creation Falstaff, whom I wrote about here, eats and drinks regularly at the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap and, although I did not blog about it, in Pride and Prejudice Jane and Elizabeth Bennet break a journey from London to Hertfordshire at an inn and dine at 'a table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords'.

A Christmas Interlude

As Christmas approaches, I thought it would be fitting to take a break from my chronological journey through literature and come up with something a little festive.  Obviously Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) has the Christmas meal par excellence, but with the school term having only ended on Friday I don’t think I really have time to roast a goose or make a plum pudding in order to replicate the meal enjoyed by Bob Cratchit and his family. 

But I was pleased to find a much simpler idea when I was teaching Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) to my Year 10s.  In chapter 9 Mrs Bennet and her two youngest daughters, Kitty and Lydia, have come to visit Jane and Elizabeth who are staying at Netherfield, guests of Mr Bingley, whilst Jane recovers from a heavy cold caught when she rode over to visit the Bingleys in a rainstorm.  During a rather awkward conversation, in which Mrs Bennet frequently makes digs at Mr Darcy’s pride (having not forgiven him for refusing to dance with Elizabeth at the Meryton assembly), Elizabeth attempts to change the subject by enquiring whether Charlotte Lucas has visited the Bennets at their home, Longbourn.  On hearing that Charlotte called on the previous day, Elizabeth enquires whether she stayed for dinner, only for Mrs Bennet to say: “No, she would go home.  I fancy she was wanted about the mince pies.”