Hellobee Boards

Healthy and sit down. I feed my kids healthy food but I'm not going to pretend like unhealthy (and tasty) food options don't exist....they can splurge on unhealthy food from time to time!

Just basic stuff, casseroles, burgers, soups, lots of grilled food in the warmer months. Almost always a veggie on the side.

My parents STILL maintain a 6 pm dinner time, with almost all the food home cooked.

Me, I don't pretend to follow the same rules. I think certain convenience items are a great help and we eat a wider variety of food than my parents do.

I think it's totally fair to be influenced by how you ate growing up! I grew up the same way as you; the home made soup, veggie dish, meat dish and usually another 'wildcard' dish. I saw how hard my mom worked on dinner; all of us were perfectly fine having pasta or whatever every now and then, but my dad is the one who wants the traditional Chinese meal every night.

I don't have LOs yet, but I feel like I'll be like that too eventually! Right now it's just me & DH so we don't cook that much food all the time. If we made soup we gotta drink it for a whole week

Easy, pretty healthy, sit down. We didn't have to clean out plates, but we weren't getting any special orders, either.

I know it shaped my views about the family dinner. Have good manners, talk with each other, and enjoy!

My dad always made a protein, a veggie, and a soup with rice for dinner every night. I loved that spread!! Now that we live on our own, and DH doesn't like veggies, our dinner is just a protein with a starch. I'm hoping to bring veggies and soup back to the table now that DS is here!

We also grew up eating dinner together. Always. Unless there was a legitimate excuse (like we had a ball game, had dance practice, etc.) If the timing was feasible, we would eat a snack and wait to have dinner together at a later time that evening.

My mom is a pretty good cook, and I never appreciated the effort that goes into putting homemade food on the table, which she did whether she was wohm or not!

We're a bit different-my husband does most of the cooking, and we eat vegetarian, but I'd like to think my upbringing set me up to like a wide variety of food. My mom always includes a salad with every single lunch and dinner, and I don't feel complete without a salad with every meal either!

It's funny thinking about this. I don't cook or serve meals any way close to what my mom did growing up and still does. My mom will make several things - protein, veggie sides, starch, etc and put them in serving dishes on the table. Leftovers are then served later in the week. I cook pretty much what DH and I can eat in one meal, usually protein/starch/sometimes veggie, and serve on plates that we eat in front of the tv. But when I think about family dinners, I feel at some point that I have to do it the way I had it growing up.

My parents are also huge on the low fat/low cal/low carb version of things, which we do not do. We drink whole milk, full fat, full calorie everything.

Sit down dinner with a protein, one or two veggies and a starch.

Sit down dinner with protein, Baggie and starch. But pretty plain cooking (veggie with butter, chicken in a simple marinade, instant white rice).

My mom was also traditional Chinese, homemade soup, a veggie, protein and a bowl of rice. Now when I cook, it's always a starch, veg, and protein.

My parents worked at the restaurant, and we lived above it. My parents would make us a dish with meat and veggies and expect us to eat a lot of rice. We didn't eat meals together since those are usually the busy hours at the restaurant.

As a parent I try to make well balanced meals with quality ingredients. I offer variety (something that was rare in my family) and often try new recipes to expose my family to different foods. I'm proud that DS1 can identify most fruits and vegetables in their raw and cooked form. We also don't eat rice at every meal (only a few times a week). I try to educate my parents on eating healthier, but they don't listen to me. They avoid eating fruit because my dad has diabetes, but they still eat rice and bread. They don't eat many veggies because it's expensive and doesn't go on sale often enough. Sigh.

They were pretty boring/normal I guess? My parents, to this day, will grill a meat (chicken/pork/burgers/whatever), plus a baked potato (usually), some sort of beans, a veggie or two on the side (corn, green beans, spinach) and salad. For every dinner. Always. LOL

When I was little we'd eat at the table as a family. I was the youngest (brother was 7 years older, sister was 3 years older), so when it was just me left at home, we'd still all eat together, but in the living room watching tv together lol

I definitely think it's shaped my dinner habits, as I don't mind not having a huge variety in our menu, and this drives DH crazy. He gets bored with foods easily, but he's such a picky eater I tend to cook the same meals every week!