Ploughman's lunch term "ploughman's lunch" is believed to date no further back than the 1950s, when the Cheese Bureau (a marketing body affiliated with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency) began promoting the ploughman's lunch in pubs as a way to increase the sales of cheese, which had recently ceased to be rationed. Its popularity increased as the Milk Marketing Board promoted the meal nationally throughout the 1960s. Pierce the Ploughman's Crede (c.1394) mentions the traditional ploughman's meal of bread, cheese and beer. Bread and cheese formed the basis of the diet of English rural labourers for centuries, with skimmed-milk cheese, supplemented
The Lunch (Velázquez) The Lunch (Velázquez) The Lunch is a very early painting by Spanish artist Diego Velázquez, finished c. 1617. The work, an oil painting on canvas, is in the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg. The painting portrays a table covered by a creased cloth, on which lie two pomegranates and a piece of bread. People attending the lunch include an aged man on the left and a young man on the right, while, in the background, an apparently carefree boy pours wine into a jug. On the wall in the background hang a white neck-band, a leather bag and, on the