Does your country have a tradition of eating specific foods on specific days?

34 comments

1. Thursday is soup day – and especially pea soup. Many lunch restaurants, schools, and cafeterias will serve soup on Thursday. In the military, Thursday always means [pea soup with oven pancake for dessert](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Hernekeitto.jpg/1280px-Hernekeitto.jpg).

   This tradition originates from pre-Reformation times when we were part of Sweden (they have the same thing there) and is most likely related to the old tradition of fasting on Fridays.

2. Just a sidenote: fredags taco is a really good deal for the shops because people need to buy 10++ products to make it.
   I only make it once a year, it’s cheaper to make a good steak with vegetables and homemade sauce or something else 🙂
   Source: Norwegian

3. November 10 is Mortens Aften in Denmark. Morten was hiding in tall grass from people chasing him, and the geese made noises to give away his hiding spot. So naturally each year on this date, we punish geese by eating… duck.

   Yeah, it makes no sense.

4. Not really a food, but in children’s families it’s very common to have fredagsslik (Fridays candy). Just a mix of candy enjoyed friday night.

5. We have pancakes (for dinner) on Pancake Day

   We eat Sunday dinner on Sunday.

   We have a whole mess of Xmas food. Like Xmas cake and mince pies.

   Bubble and squeak is for boxing day (day after Xmas) morning.

6. Some people still do Friday fish day and Wednesday minced meat day. Friday is also common for leftovers or ‘kliekjes’.

7. For sunday breakfast, there’s *Zopf*, a yeasty plaited bread with butter and milk in its dough. It looks like jewish Challah. It is more on the sweet side, but works well with cheese and cured meat.

   In the canton of Freiburg, every village or so has a feast day that was originally the village churche’s saint holiday, but it is set into autumn because there’s more stuff to eat then.

   Friends and family gather for the same procedure as every year, which is a menu of 8 courses or so:

   – saffron brioche with traditional sweet mustard
   – mutton ragout soup
   – cabbage soup
   – smoked meat, salted pork, taters, cabbage and vegetables
   – lamb leg
   – schnaps and coffee
   – meringues and double cream

   Some villages repeat the same thing after a few days, in case there’s leftovers.

   One would think Serbs would intergrate well here with their Slava. The big contention is cooked meat vs. grilled meat, I guess.

8. Fish for christmas, vestigial religious thing, lentils for new year’s lunch, to bring in money in the year, vestigial magic thing. Boiled, occasionally painted eggs and ham for Easter, vestigial fertility magic.

9. On Halloween, we eat [brack](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barmbrack) and [colcannon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colcannon) but brack being a lot more common and eaten on the lead up to Halloween too. Brack has a ring in it, the person who gets the ring in their slice is supposed to get married soon and with colcannon, different families have different traditions but my family put coins in it so that the person that finds them wouldn’t be poor

10. Fish on Fridays is not unheard of in the catholic parts of Germany.

11. On sunday we eat wiener schnitzel and chicken soup

12. Thursdays are split pea soup with pork belly, followed by crepes.

13. From ussr times there was fish day in Thursday, but I don’t know such families who still doing it, just like a joke.

14. In Januari on the first monday after Epiphany we have a tradition called lost monday (rough translation) we eat sausage rolls and apple pastries.
    The old generation such has my grandmother still eats fish on fridays.

15. Well, traditionally you eat gnocchi on Thursday in Rome and surroundings, which is why a lot of restaurants have gnocchi on the menu ONLY on Thursday. The reasons? They connect to having fish on Friday (read: the idea is to have a hearty meal before a day of leaner eating) that’s connected to Catholicism.

    Zampone and cotechno are both boiled pig roasts, and both are eaten only at New Years’ Eve with lentils (even though both keep insanely well).

16. Fish and chip friday. Origins in religious types not wanting to eat meat on a friday so ate fish instead. Had to queue at the chippie for 20 mins last friday, so the tradition lives on!

17. There’s a holiday called Fat Thursday during wich people eat a lot of doughnuts. It’s also a thing in France.

    Aside from that, i believe soups were eaten in the Sunday , but it died out

18. 28th. September is “Får-i-kålens-dag” (Feast day of the Fårikål) in Norway. It’s the feast day of one of norways most traditional dishes. It’s every year on the last thursday in september.

19. My German MIL still insists on Fish on Good Friday.

    Tbf, they do in Mexico too (where I’m kinda from).

    I’m gay. The only Jesus I care about is the one I get to nail. Hand me the bacon, please.

20. It’s a bit obscure, but November 29th is St. Pancake Day.

    A ‘old forgotten’, apparently religious, holiday created by the characters in a Dutch family comic (long published in a weekly women’s magazine) to fool the mother character into making thin Dutch pancakes for dinner. Every person at the table needs to wear one of the pancakes as a hat.

21. There was this Soviet tradition of Fish Thrusdays, when all canteens would serve fish-based meals and no meat.

    It was instituted to compensate the lack of proteins when meat was scarce and to force people away from the Orthodox tradition of having Wednesday and Friday be the fasting days.

22. In France, there isn’t a weekly national occurrence but every January it’s a tradition to eat King Cake.
    Most families would do it maybe around once a week while shops stack them at the front and school canteens have a day for them.

23. Wednesday – minced meat day (animals butchered on Monday were completely processed on Wednesday)

    Friday – fish day (Catholic thing)

    Saturday – bread day (with soup)

    Sunday – deep fry (French fries) / leftovers day (newer tradition)

24. Idk if this just a tradition on my family but I live in finland and tueday is for tacos, thursday is soup day and friday/saturday is for candy

25. Traditional : fish instead of meat on Friday

    Modern:

    * Fries on Friday evening
    * ‘Koffiekoeken’ (croissants etc.) on Sunday morning

26. Mostly those of the Christian tradition, like no meat on Friday before Easter etc

27. On Sunday most of Polish people eat scrambled eggs for breakfast and ‘rosół”( chicken broth) for dinner

28. Here in Germany:
    -Fish on Fridays (that’s mainly offered in cafeterias)
    -boiled eggs for breakfast on Sundays
    -some kind of roast on Sunday (although I think people doing this are becoming fewer and fewer)
    -bread rolls for breakfast on the weekends

29. Pickled herring is a side dish at basically all national festivities.

30. Fish on Fridays, Sunday roast on Sundays. So on Fridays often many places will serve fish and chips, on a Sunday a carvery with a roasted meat (often beef) and vegetables, mashed or roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings served with gravy, mustard and horseradish sauce.

31. > pancakes for breakfast on sunday’s.

    Really? I’ve never heard of this and it’s not something my family does. Pancakes are more dinner food (along with soup, usually pea) than breakfast food…

32. We have *vaffeldagen* – waffle day – on the 25th of March every year.

33. Sunday roasts in the U.K.! It’s also pretty common to get fish and chips or some other takeaway on a Friday or Saturday night, we have pancakes on pancake day, bubble and squeak is commonly eaten on Boxing Day and traditionally people have toffee apples on guy fawkes night

34. In Poland we have „owocowe piątki” („fruit fridays”) 🙂