Nigella Lawson addresses the ‘girl dinner’ trend

July 11, 2023 by
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TikTok user Olivia Maher has been credited with coining the phrase ‘girl dinner’ after posting a video that described how medieval peasants ate, describing it as being terrible because they had nothing to eat but bread, cheese, and perhaps a few vegetables. However, Maher went on to say it was her “ideal meal” before panning to a plate containing of bread, cheese, grapes and pickles, saying “I call this girl dinner, or medieval peasant.”

Abendbrot mit rettich from Food52

Maher explained to The New York Times: “I think the concept of girl dinner came to me while I was on a hot girl walk with another female friend of mine.” People were quick to point out that eating like this did not disappear after medieval times and it is, in fact, a common occurrence to this day. Twitter user Tom Hillenbrand said what Maher described is a typical meal in Germany called Abendbrot, and posted a photo of such a meal. Nigella Lawson retweeted that and chimed in, saying that in England they call it “picky bits.”

When I was (briefly) a short order cook at the age of 17 I thought I invented something new when I put gravy and cheese on French fries. I knew nothing about poutine, despite living in a northern state (in my defense, I lived in a very small town, had not traveled to Canada, and the internet did not yet exist). This experience is why it amuses me when someone proclaims they “invented” a food or combination of foods. True culinary innovations are rare because it’s likely that someone, somewhere, has already tried that particular combination. What happens more often is that a dish falls out of favor only to be rediscovered or “reinvented” later, or the person who feels she has invented something has borrowed from another culture or has not done any research to see if the dish already existed, which seems to be the case here.

Category: Food Online

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10 Comments

  • whitewoods  on  July 11, 2023

    Okay, but what is a “hot girl walk”? Is that when girls who think they’re hot take a stroll together, or is it something akin to hot yoga?

  • whitewoods  on  July 11, 2023

    Nevermind. I just googled it. I don’t have TikTok.

  • Jenny  on  July 11, 2023

    “Girl dinner” is it made with real girls? – Paraphrasing Wednesday regarding Girl Scout Cookies.

  • marvymer  on  July 11, 2023

    In my family we’ve always called this kind of meal “things on a plate”. There are a lot of other fun expressions for this in a New Yorker article.

  • Fyretigger  on  July 11, 2023

    That and a bottle of wine was once considered the perfect romantic picnic.

  • breakthroughc  on  July 12, 2023

    The egos of the young and narcissistic….I have referred to this a single girl dinner for 30 years.

  • Zephyrness  on  July 12, 2023

    I have always loved crackers, cheese and veggies. I first bonded with my bff of 55 years over the cheese, crackers and veggies we both brought for our grade school lunch. I suppose you could say we both invented it, since we weren’t taught to do it. Just told to “go feed yourself” So, yeah, it’s been around for a while, likely rediscovered over and over. Come to think of it, that’s what I had for dinner last night.

  • sayeater  on  July 12, 2023

    Guess I had “girl lunch” yesterday. A normal meal for me when I have no leftovers to eat. Isn’t this basically the basis for the whole board trend too?

  • gamulholland  on  July 13, 2023

    In knitting, the well-known (if you knit) 🙂 writer and teacher Elizabeth Zimmerman coined the term “unventing” for things she figured out how to do but was pretty sure someone else had already done somewhere without her awareness. She died in 1999 at 89 years old, so she would not have had access to the internet for most of her life to see whether someone else had also come up with her cool trick or stitch or shortcut. I’m sure there is plenty of unventing in cooking as well. 🙂

  • cookbookaddict2020  on  July 14, 2023

    sorry to burst this lady’s “hot girl bubble” but this approach is also the best way to feed little kids: cheese slices, grapes, apple slices and cherry tomatoes or a cut up bell pepper… Please get n touch with my publicist for my hot mom interview availability

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