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 Farmers' Lunch The Farmers' Lunch The Farmers' Lunch ("Almuerzo de campesinos") is one of the earliest paintings by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez. Painted in oil on canvas in 1618, it combines a still life of food and drink with a depiction of three comic farmers, whose physiognomy the artist studies closely. The composition shows a younger man gesturing with his right hand to reinforce the story coming from his half-open lips, and an older man listening attentively while holding his cup up to a woman so she can refill it with wine. The still life includes fish, bread, a carrot, a