How much do you cook nice meals?
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Anonymous
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Not sure how you define nice, but my son and I sit down and eat together most nights. I plan dinner around his activities. Which means my life is limited. It sucks, but it’s the one time I know we can talk. And it’s for less than 2 more years. And when given the choice my son will eat late/early to eat at the same time as me.
I think families that do not eat together find other things to do together. It does not have to be eating. |
Anonymous
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On average 4 times per week. If everyone is home and not busy we eat it together. Otherwise folks eat separately. Remaining days it’s leftovers/take out/restaurants. We don’t stress over the “niceness” of the meals as much as ensuring everyone is getting healthy food intake regularly and quality time (even if in short burst). I’ve served “nice” meals in the car and Chick-Fil-A at the dinning room table.
I make a plan for the week Saturday or Sunday. If that doesn’t happen the week is almost guaranteed to be an eat out week or quick things because I hate thinking about dinner at 6pm. |
Anonymous
| i'm confused. shouldn't this be "how often" one cooks meals? |
Anonymous
+2 We have a home cooked dinner 6 nights a week at the dining room table, cloth napkins, appropriate manners, etc. This is how my husband and I were raised and we insist on it for our kids. We have 4 kids, but 3 are away at college. The youngest is still stuck with us for a sit down dinner almost every night. We delay dinner until DC arrives home from sports at night. |
Anonymous
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Typically five nights a week. Friday is fend for yourself night, and one night we go out or get takeout. The rest of the time, barring an activity that goes through dinner, we eat something I’ve made from scratch, sit at the table with placemats, cloth napkins, etc. the meal might be simple— last night we had meatball subs with meatballs and sauce I made and froze last month— but it’s a sit down, say grace, “nice” meal, at least as I define it. Sometimes we eat late or early to accommodate practice, competitions, etc. but my teen isn’t in sports— his activities are less likely to occur during the dinner hour than sports, so my experience likely wouldn’t apply to many families.
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Anonymous
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I cook a lot from scratch, bake bread a couple times a week. This allows us to have tons of leftovers so I’d say I cook meals 4 nights a week. I usually roast a chicken, soak and cook bean, make pasta sauce or soups on Sundays.
However I also use Trader Joe’s premade stuff when busy. |
Anonymous
Yes we have nothing usually and always make time to eat together. Its very important to us, more than PTA meetings, exercise classes, book clubs etc. |
Anonymous
| 5 days a week. Well, 4 days and DH cooks every Friday. We eat out or with extended family/friends on the weekend. |
Anonymous
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Right now our teen has practice 3 nights per week from 7:30-10 including drive time. Those nights it's impossible to eat together because even if we can sit down at 6:30 it's too close to practice and it'll make him feel sick. So we rely on after school pasta or something and a hefty snack before bed.
Other than that, I probably cook a nice meal 3 nights per week. Nothing fancy. But homemade pizza, pulled bbq chicken and roasted potatoes and a nice salad, lasagna, enchiladas and homemade salsa and guac, etc.... |
Anonymous
| I only cook 2 nice meals a week but we don’t eat together, during weekdays kids eat at 4:30pm (to avoid unhealthy snacks) while doing music instrument practice and I quickly finish mine in 5 min then rush one kid to sport ( he loves that sport so we go 4 times a week). Another kid continue eats and do homework through the night, DH goes to workout or gets home from work then eats with our puppy besides him. We sometimes have time to eat together while watching a movie during weekend but it may just be left overs or take out or frozen food so it doesn’t count as nice meals I guess. Our dining table’s buried by kids books and toys plus stuff puppy shouldn’t get. |
Anonymous
| Probably 5 or 6 nights a week I cook a meal that isn’t just pasta or heat stuff up. It’s usually nice in that we all sit down together with napkins, convo, etc, but I have a five year old and seven year old so chaos often ensures. We try though! |
Anonymous
| We sit at the table to eat most nights. We eat dinner at 4pm sometimes though. Spring soccer starts soon so may involve some car dinners. I don’t know if I ever make “ nice dinners” I don’t like cooking so it’s pretty basic. It’s nutritionally healthy most of the time though. Last night was rotisserie chicken, baked potato ( microwave) with cheese, and broccoli and carrots. |
Anonymous
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I typically prep stuff for dinner each morning so that when the dual sports activity (school year round) ends and we’re home by 7:00:
Kids shower Food on table by 7:30 By 7:45 (or earlier) dinner is done for the kids Immediately after that, they have homework or activities So I cook, they eat, we’re together but the time is limited. Kids are in a ton of activities- inc social ones. |
Anonymous
| Three busy kids but HS so 1/2 activities are now right after school. We sit down together almost every night but missing 1 or 2 family members on occasion. More often than not we get everyone for 20 minutes and then whoever hast to leave for a late night practice or other extracurricular heads out. |
Anonymous
Great questions - We alternate cooking (DH and I). My kids are both in private school and sports are directly after school. Their day is structured so that the last hour is for their sport. Two kids - each does an activity 3 times M-F in addition to the school sport. The older one gets picked up at about 4pm and goes home to do homework. The younger one gets picked up at 430 and taken to the other activity, which normally goes until about 615, but we leave at 6 sharp. We eat together at about 610 and the older one goes off to her activity that starts at 630, but she aims to get there for 645. She’s home by 9pm. If I’m driving DH is cooking; if he’s driving I’m cooking. WRT to PTA and other things like that - I have 2 days a week where the kids don’t have this schedule, so we attend 100% on these days. When these events do fall on days the kids have activities, they either: get a ride with a friend, skip, or we skip the activity. Many of the competitions are on weekends. For the very rare occasion there is a weekday competition, we usually don’t have a sit down together that day. So, when I say I prioritize family meals, I do. We cut the practice short by leaving early or arriving late. It is important to us that we sit down and have a chat with the kids about their day. We want to have that calm time to check in, use manners, practice speaking without talking over people or being harried. I understand not everyone prioritizes this and that’s fine. It’s more important that my kids are socialized than good at sports or their activity, because this is a differentiator in the real world. They still do the activities, we just pack it all in. |