In Portugal, the way to get through the day until lunch (almoço) is that Portugal has what the British call, “elevenses.” In Portugal, it’s “lanche.” Sandwiches, pastries, tea and coffee fill in the gap between breakfast and dinner, which is not served until after one p.m. or 2 p.m.
Back in the day, employers gave employees a two-hour lunch. If a family lived close to where they worked, the wife went home, cooked a hot meal and served it before returning to work. Many of the shops closed right down to give employees a chance to rest (sesta). After the meal, the women got to clean up while the men went to the town square to socialize and drink their brandy and coffee before returning to work.
These meals typically begin with some kind of soup. Each region has its own style of soup, and maybe more than one. The soups with which I am most familiar are these:
Sopa à Portuguesa (which was the only food my children were raised on and Canja, which is chicken soup. The links take you to a little bit of history and the recipes for these soups.
After soup, there may be a meat, sea food or chicken dish with French fries, boiled potatoes or rice, and a salad. Dessert is rare, and is more often fruit than sweets. On special occasions there may be some sweet pudding or cake.
Around 5 or 6 in the afternoon, it’s time for another snack break to hold people over until the evening meal. The evening meal (jantar) is served between 8 and 9 p.m. and is another hearty meal – maybe leftovers from the afternoon meal.
Would you be so stressed out if your days had some leisurely built-in breaks like this?
The Portugal Years 
I’m a big fan of “second breakfast”. Lovely entry.
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Thank you. I like to graze during the day. Small meals eaten frequently works for me. Sort of a Hobbit kind of habit. Thank you for commenting.
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The professor might actually be! But I have to say the breaks look tempting. I have to agree with you, Susan. Small meals eaten frequently throughout the day work best for this professor.
Now, that last meal: was it hard to eat it that late at night?
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Shhhh! We seldom ate later than 7 p.m. and generally sooner. Especially after the children began to arrive. I am a morning lark, and even when I was younger began to fade around 9 p.m.
We did eat a meal late in Madrid once. https://inmysecretgarden.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/the-portugal-adventure-bienvenido-a-espana/
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And, Professor, you might like to visit http://theinquisitiveintrovert.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/ten-fun-things-to-do/ if you have a few minutes. I wouldn’t want the Professor to be late for anything.
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I just got these two replies! WordPress is being a dadblamery.
I’m surprised about how late you eat, but it does make sense.
Don’t worry about the professor wasting time; it’s a regularity! 😉
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“In Portugal, the way to get through the day until lunch (almoço) is that Portugal has what the British call, “elevenses.” In Portugal, it’s “lanche.” Sandwiches, pastries, tea and coffee fill in the gap between breakfast and dinner, which is not served until after one p.m. or 2 p.m. ”
Sorry very wrong, we start eating at noon (don’t know where you were so can’t comment) until about 3 or 4 depending on if you are in a business or touristic area.
“Around 5 or 6 in the afternoon, it’s time for another snack break to hold people over until the evening meal. The evening meal (jantar) is served between 8 and 9 p.m. and is another hearty meal – maybe leftovers from the afternoon meal.”
Again, depends on where you are. 5 or 6 is too late for “lanche” on some places, although we invented the 5 o’clock tea for England, we don’t snack that late normally, depends on where you are, and if people are actually joining snack with dinner (Lanche Ajantarado). If we take that late, then we have dinner only at 8h30 or 9
Dinner is normally served between 7h30 and even 10. On tourist places, some places start serving at 6h30 or 7. It is not necessarily a hearty meal, depends on the people.
So it’s not really easy to make a general accessment 🙂
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Well, as I said at the beginning of writing about our experiences in Portugal, they are /our/ experiences. As we pointed out in the beginning we lived in the Lisbon area, and we lived there eleven years (my husband lived there 14 years. We’ve been back since 1990.
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