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themselves and families in suburban Norway. The concept of a ‘proper
dinner’ is the result of complex social and cultural processes. Cooking
dinner is not only an act of caring for others, preparing a proper meal is also an
act of positioning oneself. Cooking dinner is an important part of the symbolic
production of socially and culturally acceptable feminine subject positions. The
empirical analysis is based on in-depth interviews with 25 mothers of young children
about how they think and act in their everyday dinner practice. The material shows
clear limitations on individuality when it comes to dinner patterns. There is a
network of social and cultural conventions that frame eating practices and
distinguish between different dishes. These distinctions follow a clear temporal and
spatial order. Dishes prepared from a common Norwegian ingredient, minced-meat, are
used as an example of how dishes carry quite different social and cultural
meanings.While there are several discourses surrounding dinner that offer different
possibilities for action, some representations and practices are more
‘proper’ than others. Three distinct dinner models for proper
meals are identified: the traditional, the trendy and the therapeutic.
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