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Birthday Lunch :)


NormanH
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Happy birthday Norman, hope the rest of the day is a good as the lunch looks?[B][B]

  Funny that wooly should mention the cutlery,  I thought that in France the fork was always set points down. I also always get it wrong with the "do I keep it, or do I not ? " cutlery situation in France after the first course, and how to set them on your plate when you have finished your meal, they, the French seem to prefer cutlery at twenty past eight, rather than the British six o clock.[:D]

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http://classsystem.blogspot.fr/2010/12/phone-for-fish-knives-norman.html

All this talk of fish knives, cutlery generally and indeed of Norman has reminded me of the funny John Betjeman poem "Phone for the fish knives, Norman!"

Thank goodness the French aren't so ridiculously pretentious and they very sensibly use those pliers (or whatever they are called, in Christine's picture![:D])

JJ, if you are reading this, can you remember laughing about this with me?

 

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[quote user="woolybanana"]Yes, the French are such glorious pragmatists; the things in the foto are also used for nutting male lambs. Hope they washed them![/quote]

Yes, I hope they washed them BEFORE using them on the lambs.  I'm sure they wouldn't like the smell of lobster, being animals that eat only grass, duh!

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Thanks for all the good wishes [:D]

Christine is quite right...I needed the tools in her picture, plus my fingers  ...[:$]

As for clearing away the knives and forks it seems to depend on the class of restaurant, but also if you are changing from fish to meat etc.

For example if I had been eating a seafood salad I would expect them to change before a  beef stew..

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Yes in a restaurant I would expect a change of cutlery. Strangely at home no one ever expected me to change the cutlery, and often not the plate either, although I often would going from fish to meat, or vice versa.

However, it has recently been a problem for me in England. People expect everything to be changed between courses and I have recently bought a lot of extra knives and forks, so that they are there, and ready and I'm not having to wash them all between courses, when I should be cooking.

 

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[quote user="idun"]

However, it has recently been a problem for me in England. People expect everything to be changed between courses and I have recently bought a lot of extra knives and forks, so that they are there, and ready and I'm not having to wash them all between courses, when I should be cooking.

 

[/quote]

Ah, id, that's exactly one of the things which IS completely different to "commonsense" or "pragmatism" as Wooly would have it.  Why keep changing all the eating irons and generating all that extra washing up?

Not only the changing of the cutlery, but the expectation that EVERYTHING should be piping hot.  So, warm plates and bowls, all that anxiety about keeping the food hot whilst you dish up.  Then the business of people being reluctant to start eating whilst you are doing last minute things in the kitchen and trying to plate up your own food......aaarrrggghhhh....does my head in, as the current expression goes.

But, the thing which continues to make me smile is how French soup spoons are never ROUND and are HUGE and eating soup with such "funny-shaped" spoons still seems like a foreign experience to me![:D]

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"Why keep changing all the eating irons and generating all that extra washing up?"

Yeah, just wipe the plate and knife well with a piece of bread!

 

Why are soup spoons round anyway, so you just sort of sip it off instead of putting the whole spoon in your mouth?  In France they don't spoon up soup away from you either, just do it normally.   [:D]

 

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I was rather baffled when my neighbour told me that they NEVER have bread with soup.

I'm not sure if she meant just her family, or the Charentais, or French people in general. I suppose you don't need your spoon again for the next course, so the bread is unnecessary. But soup without bread is somehow wrong.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]

http://classsystem.blogspot.fr/2010/12/phone-for-fish-knives-norman.html

All this talk of fish knives, cutlery generally and indeed of Norman has reminded me of the funny John Betjeman poem "Phone for the fish knives, Norman!"

Thank goodness the French aren't so ridiculously pretentious and they very sensibly use those pliers (or whatever they are called, in Christine's picture![:D])

JJ, if you are reading this, can you remember laughing about this with me?

 

[/quote]Thanks for posting this Sweet17. The poem came to mind while reading the thread and then I saw your link.  I rember reading it in a small book called Noblesse Oblige which had the poem, the famous essay U and Non-U by Nancy Mitford and IIRC another essay by Alan Ross whose subject matter escapes me. Still the book was published nearly 60 years ago and was a bit of a snob's charter.
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[quote user="Loiseau"]NickP wrote:   "..., the French seem to prefer cutlery at twenty past eight, rather than the British six o clock." 6.30 surely, NickP! But i do agree with your points. Angela[/quote]

 

Storey of my life Angela, I've always been half and hour behind everybody else!!!  [:D] [:D]

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May I add my belated Happy Birthday wishes to Norm !

A cutlery memory that sticks in my mind is from the old TV series M.A.S.H. when Charles arrives from an 'Old Bostonian family' and in the rather squalid mess tent exclaims 'My God! They haven't even chilled the salad forks!' 

I rather liked that idea [:P]

Sorry for going off-topic [:$] I'd buy you a nice glass of Sancerre to go with that lobster if I was closer Norm

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[quote user="Rabbie"]Thanks for posting this Sweet17. The poem came to mind while reading the thread and then I saw your link.  I rember reading it in a small book called Noblesse Oblige which had the poem, the famous essay U and Non-U by Nancy Mitford and IIRC another essay by Alan Ross whose subject matter escapes me. Still the book was published nearly 60 years ago and was a bit of a snob's charter.[/quote]

Well, Rabbie, I thought of you when I saw this://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2235856/Shallots-rye-bread-Illy-coffee-Belvedere-vodka-Middle-Class-Handbook-blog-gives-advice.html

It seems that there are no more upper class people any more and that the best any of us can hope for is to be middle class [:P]

As a matter of fact, apart from shallots, I don't buy anything else on the list.  Also, I don't agree that rye bread tastes nasty.  It's delicious but you have to buy it fresh from a good baker and not in the supermarket.

Me, I know my place as little Ronnie says in that famous sketch with big Ronnie and John Cleese [:)]

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