If the meal that falls between breakfast and lunch is called “brunch,” what does one call the meal between lunch and dinner? Lupper? Linner? Dunch?
Europeans call it “tea,” but it seems odd to call it that without a pot of hot tea and crumpets.
It’s the quandary of our star-crossed marriage.
I’ve heard that it takes a lifetime to really get to know someone. That appears to be the case with my husband, who always asks, “What are we going to do about lunch?”
Translation: “Are you going to stop what you’re doing (even though you’re on a client deadline or in the middle of recaulking the tub or fighting incoming with rocket launches) to make lunch for me, or should I plan to eat out?”
For nearly 27 years, the answer to that question has either been an eye-roll or “I don’t know what WE are doing for lunch. I only know that I’m not cooking.”
Then Bob takes himself out to lunch.
It’s a ritual that, until Oct. 1 when he retired, was restricted to weekends.
Now it’s daily.
Bob can make a mean pan of bacon and eggs, but other than that, he’s not the cooking kind of guy. A couple of months after we started dating, he invited me to his house for dinner. I was impressed. When I got to his house and noted that nothing was in preparation, I asked if he had decided that we’d go out instead.
“Oh, no,” he said, reaching into the freezer and pulling out two frozen lumps of Banquet Boiling Bags. “Would you rather have the beef stroganoff or the meatloaf?”
I was doomed.
This is a guy who expects a meat, a vegetable and a starch at every meal and thinks chicken and fish are vegetables. If there’s not a steak the size of a commode lid, it’s not a meal.
So early on, I laid down my rules. I’ll cook one meal a day. You pick.
When I was commuting to work in Virginia Beach for two years, it wasn’t uncommon to get home two hours later than Bob. I’d walk in -– hoping against hope –- that he had started something for dinner to find him and the three boys on the sofa lined up on like bowling pins, the stove cold and the table bare.
“I thought you’d never get home,” he’d say. “We’re starving.”
“Why didn’t you warm something up –- can’t you start something?”
“I didn’t know what you wanted to do.”
While the kids were young, I implored him to remarry quickly if I should die. Otherwise my kids would starve. I even picked out a few potentials for him based on culinary skills.
How is it possible that I married not one -– but two -– men (sequentially) that not only couldn’t -– but wouldn’t -– learn to operate a microwave? Bob can rebuild a computer, troubleshoot a transmission or rewire the house. But take leftovers out of the frig and warm them in a microwave? Clueless.
Now that he’s retired, mealtime has become a roulette. Because he sleeps later and is painfully slow, especially in the morning, because of his Parkinson’s, he’s usually not ready for breakfast until 11:30 or 12. He’s pouring cereal when I’m foraging for lunch.
Around 4 or 4:30, he’s ready for lunch while I’m just beginning to consider what I might nuke for dinner.
“What are you planning today?” He’ll ask. This is a food-based question, not one about my work schedule.
“I cook one meal a day. You pick.”
“I’m hungry now.”
“Is this going to be lunch or dinner?”
“It can be whatever you want to call it.”
And so methinks the question remains, as hunger hangs in the balance for yet another day. Ah, the sorrow.
Photo: Romeo and Juliet
