Commentary

The old saying, ‘Eat dessert first. Life is uncertain’

September 10, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There have to be days when, if you are the cook in the family, you rebel. Especially if you have too much of a routine – chicken on Tuesday, the same fish every Friday, you feel the need to push back once in a while and bend the family dinner menu.

There are families that eat in different places – the teens maybe taking their meals to their own rooms to play video games while they eat, or the family that drags their table into the living room so they can watch television while they eat…

When I was young, dinner was always treated as one of the major events of the day: sitting together as a family, although there could be a dog at one’s side. Well, that was so much the case, I can hardly remember a meal I didn’t share with the mutt with hopeful eyes, ready to accept whatever morsel I passed its way, only to thump down beside my chair contented, as if understanding that dogs do not get tidbits of dessert.

This might be exaggerating a little.

Our attitude toward food and our consumption of it largely defines our culture; then are the changes our lives have made in us from where we have lived, whom we have known and what we have loved as we have moved through our time to date. Food explains what we have learned, and as we grow, if we were to keep a record, we might find large and little differences in how we approach our daily meals.

When did you learn to eat with chopsticks? Or enjoy your meal when you used bread as the tool of choice? Where were you, and who were you with, when you had a multi-course meal and learned the benefits of drinking wine with it? And early in your life, who were the main influences in discovering your favourite food and the way it is served?

Dinners and lunches have sponsored the great moments in history. Some of the grandest meals have been the venues to achieve an accord, with the visit of dignitaries of one country to the dignitaries of another. Lavish affairs are waited on by gentlemen wearing gloves, shades of centuries-old tradition, hoping for lost sincerity to bond a friendship.

Food is at the crux of everything. All our needs and demands are food-based, from how we cultivate it to how we dispose of our waste. Our handling and ingestion of food define and preoccupy us constantly. Politics is moved by food policies, and the cost of food dictates everyone’s level of health.

Indeed, on a very personal level, many of our important moments may well have taken place across the table and over the carefully thought-out meals warm upon the plates.

Begin with how your own use of food has changed, not only because you may have learned to like eating with chops sticks but as well because you have experiences that have taken you in many directions additional to the early days of your childhood dinner time memories.

Yet, here is the question: how did we ever allow ourselves to tumble to the level of bad eating into which we seem to have fallen? Look at what is on the shelves of almost every grocery store. Aisle after aisle of packages of that which is not food as such but a combination of fats and salts fried up as energy horrors, leading us to all sorts of health problems that are ravaging us.

Do you read the contents on the package before it goes into the basket? Are we truly paying attention to what fast-food places are feeding our children, or to the steady flow of delicious bet-you-can’t-eat-just-one junk food that our kids and we consume all too often? Are we thoughtful about those ready-to-microwave-and-eat meals…

It is important to be wary of addiction to “junk food” and soda drinks.

So, the other day, I was fed up with my own lapse into the doldrums of menus that have been the mainstay of Patricia’s and my dinners. All good and healthy, organic for the most part, convinced as I am that the nay-sayers are wrong but conscious and my stance as an environmentalist sometimes battle with cost and a detente is often the best compromise.

The standards were good, but we began our meal last night with cherry pie and a cup of Harrods’s Earl Grey tea as an appetizer, followed by salad, the main course and a very small chocolate cake that was simply scrumptious. Rosé wine on the side.

An indulgent rebellion to monotony.

Orangeville is really lucky with the brave souls who have chosen to open restaurants here. Many of them answer the questions about healthy food with truth and truly delicious. As a consequence in part, they contribute to Orangeville as a destination, bringing people from the cities to discover what else is interesting here, including the festivals, theatre and events taking place throughout the year.

But I don’t know if any of them serve cherry pie as a starter.

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