The Joy of Skipping Dinner

Monday friends made us dinner, starting with that strangely popular, rib-sticking American appetiser; cheese and cold cuts.This doesn’t so much tickle your taste buds as beat them up and leave them whimpering in the gutter. Menu-wise where can you go after a wodge of ripe gorgonzola and a plate full of thinly sliced pig? Maybe a stick of celery and a cup of camomile tea. But not anything with parmigiana in the title. Please, anything but that.

Tuesday a friend asked us to lunch. Before accepting we did warn her that a) we had a dinner date that evening and b) we both have waistband issues. ‘Sure’ she said. ‘We’ll eat light.’ And proceeded to serve us a four course meal that included a risotto, a steak and a salad Niçoise.

We rallied as best we could for dinner. I toyed with the lasagne and the veal cutlet, suspecting, rightly it turns out, that there was a magnificent peach pie in the oven.

Wednesday we should really have confined ourselves to hot water and a bouillon cube but unfortunately we had already invited people to dinner at our place. Mr F, wearing a pair of High’n’Wide expandable leisure shorts, made Beef in Guinness and very good it was too. I, robed in a jamboree-size scout tent, grilled a few veggies.

This evening we sat in the gathering dusk, each waiting for the other to bring up the subject of dinner. Or rather the subject of skipping dinner and all its comforting rituals; lighting the candles, pulling the cork, cueing up Frankie on the CD player. We did it though. A small chicken sandwich, easy on the mayo, and Episode 1 of Smiley’s People

Smiley stomach too.

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