The Dinner Hour

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We have always lived on a fairly European meal schedule around our house. My husband runs on a very late clock, and I have always tended to write best in the late afternoon and early evening, so there is no way we are going to manage to sit down to dinner early. And summer is the absolute worst! 7:00 to 7:30 is when it just begins to get cool enough to do outside chores. There is the daily second watering for me (at this point I'm always tempted to just let all those potted plants die!) and pond maintenance and other yard chores for Rick, and any little extra things that need to be done (or can be borne) outside. By the time I come in and cook, we are lucky to get dinner on the table by 9:30! And sometimes even later, I confess, no matter my best intentions. I always think I'll start crock pot meals in the morning but somehow that seldom happens, and I've sworn off grilling until it cools off a little here.

(Disclaimer: This is not what our dinner place settings normally look like, although it is our china, silver, and glassware. We eat most nights at our coffee table in the living room, on our old cork-backed London landmark placemats, but that didn't make a very pretty photo!)

Even when I was growing up, my family didn't have dinner on the table at five o'clock. That was considered uncivilized in the extreme. Of course, my parents had spent a lot of time in Mexico City, and then in Europe and Asia. Also, my dad had grown up on a farm in East Texas and didn't like anything that reminded him of farm life. They quit work around five and then had cocktail hour (so very civilized!) then we ate around 7:00.

(I have always aspired to follow in my parents' footsteps on the cocktail hour, but, alas, I can never manage to squeeze it in. I'm usually having a very late cup of tea instead…)

What about you, dear Reds? Are you early birds, or do you run on a later clock? And do you feel guilty if you do run late?

RHYS BOWEN:  I’m married to an upper class Brit who thinks it’s uncivilized to dine before 8. As I get older I prefer to eat earlier. 7 is ideal for me so I have time to digest before bed. We tend to compromise! 

I hope I’ll never want to eat at 5 pm!

I do like my cocktail hour, especially sitting on my deck when the first cool breezes come in. Aperol Spritz is the current favorite although if the day has been hot then a lager goes down well, with root veggie chips or radishes and hummus 

HALLIE EPHRON: Dinner time growing up was always 6:30 sharp if we were eating with my parents who’d get home from a day working at the studio, ensconce themselves in the den, and drink scotch on the rocks until our wonderful amazing cook, Evelyn Hall, called us to dinner. If my parents were out for dinner, we kids ate at 6. Sharp. It was a very sheltered existence. But if you looked carefully: external order, internal chaos. (I owe my sanity to Evelyn Hall.)

These days I eat at any time after 6. Not on the clock, just when I’m hungry and feeling like throwing something together (or washing last night’s dishes.) It’s very Zen. And one of the few plusses of being alone.

LUCY BURDETTE: For me it wouldn’t be a matter of feeling guilty about eating late, it would be that I’m STARVING by 6 pm. That’s when we almost always eat, unless we have company and might push it to 7. My brother and his wife eat somewhere between 9:30 and 11 pm. Yikes! They are very kind to move it up when we visit. I suppose it partly depends on what time you get up?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: This is SO interesting! We generally eat at…9:30. It's because I am always working, and there’s so much to do– and yes, Debs, I also write best in late afternoon and early evening– then Jonathan finishes his work at about 6, and while I am still writing, he takes an hour on  the treadmill, and when he’s finished, I do my treadmill time, and then I change and cook and by that time-whoa. It’s 9 or 9:30.  It’s fun, and it works for us. 

I don’t think I could have dinner at 5–it would feel very weird to me. Like…lunch. :-)  

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’ve had different dinner times at different stages of my life. When my mom married John Fleming, dinner was 6PM set. In. Stone. He got home from work around 5:30 and he was hungry! I think he also liked the rest of the evening to putter around in his work room.Tiny tots, we did something like the traditional tea in England. They’d eat at five, and Ross and I would eat after their 7pm bedtime. Then for a blissful decade it was the whole family between 6 and 7 sitting at the table. Then came sports, theater, robotics, etc. etc. and we devolved into “It’s ready on the stove by 5pm, grab it when you can.”

Now I’m a 7pm gal. Time enough for a cocktail at 6, and my stomach’s not full when I go to bed at 10.  I agree with Hank - the dinner at 5 stereotype of oldsters sounds as if they then turn in for the night at 8, and that can’t be right, right?

JENN McKINLAY: I eat whenever the Hub calls me to dinner, which is usually at 6 as he gets home from work at 5:15 and starts cooking because he’s starving. On weekends, he occasionally calls me to dinner at 4:30!!! If he has a late night gig the night before, he’s asleep by 9. There is no cocktail hour for us as Hub has been sober for 16 years and I don’t drink at home, unless it’s an Irish coffee after dinner. 

DEBS: Now, obviously the next question for you all is whether you actually sit down to dinner at a proper table or, like us, do you abandon decoram and gravitate towards the coffee table and the TV? I would apologize more, but that is usually my only hour of TV, and I look forward to it as my reward for a day's work as well as the cooking!

What say you, dear readers?

Oh, and here's the real dinner deal, as of last night. Cat included. So we're not too horribly uncivilized.