Friday, March 22, 2013

quicko: servings

At dinner in American homes, the table is set and there are various dishes served on the table -- meat, vegetables, salad, etc. -- that are passed around and everyone takes what they want.  There's generally a fair few leftovers at the end that make, say, lunch the next day.

In Australia, though, the standard is for each plate to be individually dished up in the kitchen by whoever prepares the meal and everyone is given a set amount of food that simply, I am told, becomes the amount of food you want for dinner that night.  Leftovers are rarer and generally along the lines of "the sausages came in a pack of 10 but there are 4 people who each ate 2 so we'll put 2 away for later."

4 comments:

Mom said...

I guess that means there aren't many folks of Italian descent in Australia, the kind whose mothers encourage you to keep eating more.

Does this mean that Australians have not heard of seconds? What do they do if they are still hungry, or really liked a dish and want just a tad more of it? Is it impolite to ask?

Laetitia :-) said...

At one point, Melbourne was known as the biggest 'Greek' city outside of Athens and Brisbane also has a large Greek population, BUT, our Italian populations are apparently [b]bigger[/b].

My husband's family do the bowls of different things on the table being passed around but they rarely end up with more than anyone really wants such that it's kept for 'Ron. On the other hand, I come from a tradition of mothers doing a very good job of judging how much a person eats based on their size.

it's not impolite to ask if there is any more of a particular thing left if you're visiting.

And my husband and I, being busy and only the two of us will do up large batches to have leftovers to put away for lunches and dinners on other nights when neither of us wants to cook. When we have visitors we often invite them into the kitchen to dish up their own dinner as much as they want (we tend to ask how hungry people are before we cook in those circumstances so we aren't caught short). Of course, since there is no separate dining room from the kitchen in our current house (and it all segues into the front room anyway), inviting them into the kitchen is rather unavoidable if we want them to sit at the table to eat.

Erin said...

I think it depends what type of food it is too. If it's meat and 3 veg, then it gets served up in the kitchen and there are no leftovers. If it's spag bol, curry, stir fry, casserole, etc then it gets served up, and there's probably leftovers. If it's tacos, pizza, anything with salad, etc - it's all on the table to grab as you please.

Erin said...

I think it depends what type of food it is too. If it's meat and 3 veg, then it gets served up in the kitchen and there are no leftovers. If it's spag bol, curry, stir fry, casserole, etc then it gets served up, and there's probably leftovers. If it's tacos, pizza, anything with salad, etc - it's all on the table to grab as you please.