The weekend, Part II--Sunday Lunch

There is a great British tradition called a Sunday Lunch (or Sunday Dinner, or Sunday Roast) which is a meal eaten on Sunday afternoon, consisting usually of a central meat, usually beef, pork, chicken or lamb, and various vegetables, especially roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots and similar. This tradition dates back to when landowners rewarded their peasants for their work during the week with a roast ox each Sunday after church. Typically, a roast was put into the oven before church so that it would be ready to eat when you got back.

Well, we went to a Sunday lunch at a friend's house and had a very nice time. My friend Amanda arranged this with three couples of mixed meat-eating preferences. She's vegan and her boyfriend Tom is not. Matt's vegetarian and I'm not. Same with the other couple, and everyone else who was there. This was ostensibly an occasion for non-vegetarians to satisfy their craving for a large hunk of still-bloody meat, while allowing the more civilised vegetarians to enjoy some kind of vegetable casserole and feel superior.

Here our friend Tom is carving a joint of pork.



On the plate, it looked like this.



You see a big slice of roast pork, potatoes which have been coated in pork drippings and roasted, carrots prepared the same way, stewed red cabbage, and home-made roasted apple sauce, which is traditionally eaten with pork here. And there is gravy poured over the top of everything. So definitely not a meal you want to eat more than once a week!

After Sunday lunch we went to the birthday party of a friend of Matt's from his course in Cambridge, who now lives in London. Matt is not good with directions, but while we were wandering lost, we managed to snap some pictures of Canary Wharf, one of the big financial districts of London.



Monday it was back to work!