Welcome to Dinnermates.com

Many people claim that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Here at dinnermates.com we beg to differ, however. You seldom, if ever, hear about Thanksgiving breakfasts or Christmas breakfasts, just to name two. It’s always Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner, wedding dinner, dinner parties, and the list goes on. On this website you can find the best information on the the different types of dinner, how to organize them, recipes, ideas, and facts about the word dinner itself.

The origin of dinner

The word dinner derives from an old French (around the year 1300) term, disner, that mean breakfast, from the Gallo-Romance stem desjunare (to break fast), from Latin dis (undo) and late Latin ieinurare (to fast), and from Latin ieinus (fasting, hungry). Perhaps that where the confusion about breakfasts being the most important meal of the day comes from, when that honors is clearly bestowed upon dinner. Dinner is so important that even though is preceded by two previous meals, it is still the larger of the three. Moreover, and in addition of the daily dinner, there are also many other august occasions that are centered around a dinner, as we are about to see.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner is long-standing tradition in both the United States and Canada. Although the centerpiece of such dinner is a large roasted turkey, the truth is that many different foods accompany the bird, especially those native to the New World, or native American Cuisine. These include cornbread, cranberry, blueberry, hominy and mush; and are used to make such side dishes as cranberry sauce, stuffing or dressing, gravy, winter squash, yams, mashed potatoes, dumplings, corn on the cob, deviled eggs, green bean casserole, bread rolls, salad. As for dessert, there is apple pie, mincemeat pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie. Of course that a lot of liquid is needed to wash all that food down. Typical Thanksgiving dinner beverages include spirits or cocktails (before the main meal), apple cider and wine.

Not many people outside of North America know why Thanksgiving is celebrate with a dinner. The festivity is actually a combination of European and Native traditions. Festivals were often held in Europe to signal the end of the harvest cycled and thank the gods for a good harvest, and Native Americas had similar customs. When the pilgrims arrived from Europe into American soil, these
practices would meet. The original American Thanksgiving dinner was held in 1621, between first English settlers of the Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag people, a Native American nation, in what is today Massachusetts. Canadian Thanksgiving, on the other hand, was started by explorer Martin Frobisher, who held a ceremony in 1578 to give thanks for having survived a dangerous journey through the Northwest Passage into Newfoundland, an island belonging to Canada.

Christmas Dinner

Unlike Thanksgiving dinner, which is celebrated only in the US and Canada and by expatriates from both countries, Christmas dinner is held pretty much worldwide. Consequently, customs vary from country to country. In Australia for example, the fact that Christmas falls in the heat of the summer, means that traditional English meals like ham, turkey and chicken are serve frequently served cold. Barbecues and seafood are also very popular. In France, reveillon is a long dinner and party held on Christmas Eve, and that includes luxurious items such as lobster, oysters, escargots and foie gras. In Germany, traditional dishes include roast goose, roast carp, suckling pig. Side dishes can be roast potatoes, kale, brussel sprouts and red cabbage. Sweets and pastries are imperative for a successful Christmas dinner in Germany, including Marzipan, Lebkuchen, Christstollen and Dresdener Stollen. In Finland, Joulupyta, or Yule table, is a traditional food board served during Christmas dinner, and which contains Christmas ham with mustard, Karelian stew, boiled potatoes, lutefisk and white sauce, Gravlax, and many types of casseroles, such as potato, carrot, liver and rutabaga, amongst many other plates. Beverages include vodka, glogg, beer, milk and wine; and typical desserts are prune jam pastries, gingerbread, mixed fruit soup, plum soup, rice pudding, ice cream with jam and confectioneries. A similar Scandinavian buffet-style feast is known as Smorgasbord in Sweden whence it originated, as koldtbord in Norway, as kolde bord in Denmark, and as rootsi laud in Estonia. The Christmas dinner version, called julbord, includes bread dipped in ham broth, salmon, herring, whitefish, eel, ham, meatballs, head cheese and sausages, potato casserole, boiled potatoes, and more. Finally, there’s the twelve-dish Christmas Eve dinner, commonly prepared in Eastern European countries like Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. This dinner is held with candle lights and only starts after the first star has appeared in the sky, which represents the birth of Jesus.

Keep browsing through the pages of dinnermates.com in order to find many subjects related to dinner, such as etiquette, as well as both a romantic dinner for two and a business dinner.