[Sca-cooks] brunch?

[Susan Lord]

> 
> Steven wrote:
> 
> Right. Through out most of period (and cultures?) breakfast as one of the first things you did after getting up, did not exist, and as Suey points out, was often done after mass so not the first event of the day. And they did this without coffee or tea!
> 
> For some of our pervious discussions on breakfast:
> http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/breakfast-msg.html

You have a point there. The Spanish custom of "breaking the fast" was not a family gathering down through the ages. it simply consists of the individual eating a piece of bread and sipping a glass of wine on his own as seen in the Henry III’s Chronicles, at the turn of the 15th century, in which his alcoholic wife Catherine Lancaster broke her fast after mass by drinking wine and eating bread alone in her chambers. Even my Spanish husband went out bought himself a breakfast roll and the newspaper, came home made his tea and ate his breakfast alone in the dining room while reading the newspaper.

I was so impressed in Virginia on the Bird plantation when my plane was grounded and heiress housed all of us from the plane on the family estate. No food was offered when we got up in the morning. A Bible study was given in the family study followed by “a breaking of the fast” for all 40 of us which according to family tradition consisted of a spread of kidneys, sausages, eggs, fruits - everything the Ritz hotel would offer for a Sunday brunch served by a ton of black help. That’s a long way from a Spaniard munching a breakfast roll alone . .  . but points out cultural differences.