From A.A. Milne, “A House is built at Pooh Corner”
He looked up at his clock, which had stopped at five minutes to eleven some weeks ago.
“Nearly eleven o’clock,” said Pooh happily. “You’re just in time for a little smackerel of something,” and he put his head in the cupboard.
In our house, we don’t see the need to alter the clocks. We have our smackerel between three and four in the afternoon. My husband G. Grod and I have tea; currently it’s English Breakfast for him and camomile (not technically a tea, since it’s not made from the tea plant) with Ames Farm honey for me. Our son Drake gets diluted juice, usually prune. For food, we munch on crackers, fruit and cheese. Most recently, Drake is eating (and saying the word) dates, and learning how to eat sandwich cookies.
Our afternoon smackerel is one of my favorite family traditions. It provides a useful (and tasty) push to see us through the torpor of late afternoon.
March 2nd, 2005 at 7:00 am
we do this in our household too. we call it ‘a mug up’ which is derived from a similar tradition our friends from Alaska share.
March 2nd, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I can only imagine that the need for such a thing is magnified in places with little sun. We’re lucky here in MN. It may be cold, but the sun usually shines. We’re partial to tea cups rather than mugs, usually, ever since I realized that they have a physical advantage over mugs–they let the tea cool sooner, since there’s greater surface area and a shallower volume. But yesterday we used mugs, because I’d picked up stroopwaffels at the grocery. They are maple waffle cookies that you set over the mug of steeping tea, making them warm and gooey. Yum.