As I was a kid it was pretty normal to prepare at one day all the meat for one week.
No matter what kind of meat it was it was fried on Mondays, covered by gravy and warmed up each day of the week till it all was eaten.
Friday: it was leftovers-day.
Saturday: soup with 2 slices of bread.
Sunday: exclusive dinner at home or restaurant.
In Holland you have usually 1 cooked meal and 2 bread meals.
In the old days it was common to have dinner (the cooked meal) at noon. Women/mothers seldom did work. They stayed at home, took care of their children and waited for them to come home. At 3:30 it was tea time. Tea with biscuits.
My mother was not the stay-at-home -mom.
She had to work so my father could study and make his dream come true (and yes after that he left her since he didn't need her any longer).
Although we had a housekeeper and there was a time there was a nanny for my baby brother as well, I learned to cook at a young age. It was a good thing I liked it (I collected recipes as well at the age of 8 years old, still have them).
Nowadays most people work and dinner is after work 6 pm or even later (so no one will take any notice of the rule not to call someone during dinner time or after 8 pm).
With us it was simple. Dinner time was at noon. If you couldn't make it to be there you could find your meal on the stove (a way to keep it warm or burned).
My granny saved it on a shelf in the basement (also if you did not like it) and you could pick it up there and eat it cold till the plate was empty. Ever eaten stiffed gravy?
Meat with gravy was it 4 times a week and nobody got ill or died from it.
About 1/3 of the food on the plate was vegetables, 1/3 potatoes and 1/3 meat (or less). Meat was for sure not the most important part of the meal (for a long period commercials tried to promote eating meat with the slogan: Meat Madame you know why.). By now it is even way less eaten, because of the sky high prices (strange if you consider the fact we are a country full of pigs and cows) and being vegan is hot.
My mother in law always served steak.
Just steak. It was baked for some hours and she kept it "warm" at the?
She baked it in real butter. It was the only meat and gravy that always made me feel sick immediately after I ate it. I still wonder what her secret ingredient was. I cannot remember she ever served vegetables or potatoes. I guess she simply found it too much work to prepare a complete meal.
In some countries people do eat a lot of meat, no matter how less money they have to spend.
The underneath Hungarian commercial says enough. Although I think Burka might be black pudding.
Do you notice how slim people were at that time? Perhaps we all should start eating again the way we did in the old days!
And for all the dutch(speaking) people I found this commercial. Cutting meat was a man's job in the old days. The child has just one question: Who is that man who is cutting the meat on Sundays?
