Little Bears Family Pages
Welcome to the
Dining Room
(or
Honey Bear's Tree)
"Behold the fowls of the air: for
they sow not, neither do they reap; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?"
Matthew
6:26
Contents
* Table Manners * Graces * Table Linen * Newspapers * Coffee * Tea *
I thought I would see if I could find anything on Table Manners, and Manners & Ettiquette generally...
My searches on the internet have turned up the following books:-
(Recommendations for books and/ or links would be welcome).
I'm also interested in Graces. (As my Dad always says, "undeserved flavour" as opposed to God's Grace which is "undeserved favour"!) Our standard one is along the lines of
"Dear Father, we just want to thank You for this meal You have provided, and we ask You to bless this food to our bodies and us to Your service, in Jesus' name, Amen."
But I know there are some beautiful graces to say & even sing aloud at the table, so I'll be looking for links.
I'd also like to find something about Table Linen to make or buy (currently we have a collection of begged & borrowed tablecloths!).
The other thing we generally do in the dining room (especially Mark) is to read the Newspaper! (Although he's been known to do this anywhere, at any time... including, I have to say other people's newspapers and magazines at other people's houses...) We don't normally buy a paper, although when we do it's usually the "Times" or the "Independent", but we do get masses of free newspapers: at home in Watford, it's the "Watford Observer", and here in Milton Keynes, there's the midweek "Citizen" along with the "Sunday Citizen". When we were living in Stockholm, we got "Metro" free on the tunnelbanan, as well as "Östermalms Tidningen" (I'll put some links in later).
I'm usually in the Dining Room because my Coffee maker is in there. I got a taste for really strong black coffee when we lived in Sweden, (the world's biggest consumer of coffee per capita); they really do seem to like it as the saying goes, "hot as hell and black as sin".
My favourite brands are Gevalia, Löfbergs Lila, which are both Swedish, but here in England, the best coffee I've found is probably Tesco's own, believe it or not! (French Style, strength 5) Sadly, though, I can't afford to buy "real" coffee except for special occasions, so I've had to wean myself off the good stuff and back on to instant coffee (yuck!) the only way to get that stuff down is with plenty of cream and a good heaped teaspoon of demerara sugar to take away the taste!
Whilst I'm on the subject, I thought I'd just make mention of tea. The drink I and most of the people I know drink more than anything else seems to be called "English Breakfast Tea" which we take always with milk. I like mine to taste mildly of tea, but to have plenty of milk, but people seem to be quite particular about how they take their tea, and I never buy tea in restaurants as they just can't make it the way I like it!
When we lived in Sweden, a Finnish friend of mine bought me a teapot, saying that she thought it was "a tragedy for an English person to be stranded away from home without a teapot"! But it's true - in my house, a cup of tea is the answer to everything! When I was knocked down by a car one icy morning in 1994, I was brought home and the first thing I was offered was a cup of sweet tea (funnily, I never discovered putting honey in tea until I went to Finland - honey mostly ends up on toast in this house - but now I'm hooked)! But it doesn't stop there - when The Salvation Army arrives at disaster scenes, for instance the rail crash at Canon Street, they were there handing out, you've guessed it, cups of tea!
If you were looking for Recipes, why don't you pop into the Kitchen.
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© Sharon
Mortemore
10 February, 2001