Sunday Dinner

Hypocritical Chicken & Fennel Risotto (Recipe: author's own)

If you look at the Wikipedia entry for Sunday dinner, apart from noticing that it resembles Clement Freud venturing in his Just A Minute pomp, you'll see that it offers two explanations as to the origins of the meal:

1. During the industrial revolution, Yorkshire families left a cut of meat in the oven before going to church on a Sunday morning, which was then ready to eat by the time they arrived home at lunchtime.

2. The Sunday Roast dates back to medieval times, when the village serfs served the squire for six days a week. Then on the Sunday, after the morning church service, serfs would assemble in a field and practice their battle techniques and were rewarded with a feast of oxen roasted on a spit.

Leaving the Yorkshire propaganda to one side, that seems a bit generous of the squire if you ask me. A weekly spit-roasted oxen just for a bit of tilling and crop rotation? They really did put the food in fuedalism back then, no wonder peasant dishes are all the rage nowadays.

Anyway, far from just rehashing a Wikipedia article and throwing in a few derogatory mentions of a certain impoverished area on the western edge of Newcastle to make it mine, I'd like to offer a third explanation for the start of Sunday dinners:

3. It's lush.

It is though isn't it? What would you rather have for your dinner, something delicious or something not as nice? Hmm, tricky. I'll admit it wasn't as good when you were a kid, Sundays were a different prospect then what with homework, bad telly and the shops being closed. I don't remember liking my Sunday dinner that much then, too many memories of the smell of over-boiled vegetables hanging in the air and condensation on every window. Sundays are much better when you're a grown-up, swap homework for hangovers, the telly is still bad but you can enjoy it for what it is now and everything is much improved by having a proper dinner, especially if someone else has made it whilst you loaf around scratching yourself. 

Going out for Sunday dinner is becoming increasingly popular but it doesn't really work because of the enforced formality, then you've got to do things like walk your food off or go to a craft fair and baulk at the price of hand-made cakes of soap. At the very least you have to travel home afterwards, you can't lumber straight from the table and collapse on the settee to spend the next few hours wallowing in your own gluttony, elaborately blowing off and blaming it on one of the young 'uns. You're getting the meal, which is good, but out of its proper context it's just not the same.

Who sits for a proper Sunday Scoffer these days though? You're more likely to get people grazing fast food on the hoof rather than prepping veg and ramming a lemon and some garlic up a chicken's flappy hoop. I used to work next to a McDonalds and the queues for the drive-thru always peaked on a Sunday; as far as I know they weren't offering Ronald's Roast Beef with all the McTrimmings. Dillons fish and chips in Throckley (bingo!) opens seven days a week, just in case you fancy a donner meat pizza to go with the Eastenders ominbus on your stolen telly. Disgusting. They always did have a lower class of peasant around there, the closest they've ever got to roast oxen is in the Real Crisps flavour range.

Don't get me wrong - there's nothing wrong with takeaways (and I know people love to trot out the old "I'm too busy to cook" lie) but not on a Sunday, takeaways are for Saturday nights in or Friday nights on the way home from the drinker. The least you can do on a Sunday is have egg sandwiches, it might not be a lovingly roasted gammon but they're an acceptable alternative, especially in the summer. At least that way you're not contributing to the collapse of civilised society as we know it. You know who you are.

Status: Dying
Lookalike: Microwaveable Roast Lamb-style Dinner For One
In Three Words: More Tea Vicar?