the dinner thing explained

[ritaxis]

So here's the reason I was asking people about the shape of dinner. At least one of the editions of The Joy of Cooking says something about "in California, where they do everything their own way, the salad comes first." Another old cookbook says "It's becoming more common for people everywhere to serve the salad first, as they do in California." And this Spanish cookbook I was reading said, "In Spain, as in California, the salad is served first."

I'm a California girl, and yeah, if there's going to be an order to the meal, I expect salad to come early (but I think soup trumps salad for first position, though since I have no dining room and an awkwardly-shaped kitchen with no room for a dining table, dinners here are always food laid out around the kitchen all at once and people fare the best they can). But I just thought it was weird that for a time anyway there was a perception that salad comes some other place in the meal than the front, except in California and Spain, where you expect things to be different.

On another front, I'm at 46K words for Prospect Road, and for probably the first time ever I have no clear idea of what the end of the story is. But I'm having fun with it, which is some consolation. Oh, and Afterwar? doing that thing with the verbs might be paying off. I don't know. Anyway, I did realize that the word the writing group probably wanted instead of passive is static. Because passive means something grammatically, and it's not "excessive use of appositives (if I remember that right) and progressive past."

Comments

[momomom.livejournal.com]

Well in that case I'll add this to my stuff. Even if we serve buffet style or family style most people tend to eat their salad first here in Maryland.

I have read that in Europe salad is served later.