Beginning Family Dinners

We do family dinners – my husband cooks and almost always has dinner ready when I bring my daughter home from day care or from whatever “adventure” (i.e. errand) we were on that day. However, even though she is 3, he still prepares a separate meal for her! I am trying to encourage him to just feed her what we both eat …

I adore Blue Apron. I feel like im eating restaurant food every time I make it. My husband use it for the opposite method though, we put our 18 month old to bed, then pour a glass of wine and get cooking. I usually save her a mini-meal from ours though so she’s not left out completely.

Love the wine picture. I have been using Blue Apron for many months and I feel it has really changed how we cook and spend dinner time together.
Thanks for sharing :)
http://www.southernfolly.com

My parents used to do the 2 dinners thing, and my poor mom admitted years after my dad left that it was way too much work for her since she would cook 2 separate meals from scratch each evening! I can’t imagine eating dinner at 8-9 pm on a work night. My husband and I are starving by the time we get home from work and usually eat by 5:30-6. We’re in bed by 10. We are at work the next day by 7:30 am. Ugh lol. I think in NYC people generally eat later, though. Sadly I need my sleep. I imagine once I have a kid, we’ll probably do the family dinner thing simply because I won’t want to make 2 meals (the kid will eat what we eat as soon as he/she is able to eat solid food!).

Family breakfast is our way to get everyone together daily for a finger-on-the-pulse gathering. It took some tinkering to figure out exactly how (neither us of us is a morning person), but now hubby gets the 18 month old ready while I prep the meal. 5 year old sets the table, et voila! Feels so good just to be together, pouring tea and munching toast, listening to quiet music. We look at the day’s calendar, read a book, and away we go! It’s the best.

I am allllll about the family dinners! We have almost three year old twins, and we sit down and eat as a family at the table every night, all of us eating the same meal (sometimes the kids’ food is deconstructed or less spicy if necessary). We recently spent a weekend with two other families with toddlers, and ours were the only ones that sat well at the table and ate what everyone else was served, and it’s not because they’re better kids or we’re better parents, but just because that’s what they’re used to. It’s made it nice because they are very well-behaved when we eat out.

I will say, $9 per person for a home-cooked meal seems a little high for me, but we’re largely vegetarian, and that saves us a lot of money.

We have 3 littles (4 years old, 2.5 years old, and 8 months old) and do mostly family dinners.
Once or twice a week we’ll have dinner after the kiddos are asleep (we almost always have the same lemon pasta) but otherwise I get dinner on the table for 5pm family dinner.
We light candles and serve everything in proper serving bowls so the kids can serve themselves. The baby has little taste tests of whatever we’re eating. We don’t use a meal plan (partly because we don’t eat meat) and we’re just about to start meal planning as a family (until now I have just done it myself and ordered groceries for delivery).
We’re going to let the kids get involved in choosing a couple of dinners a week and even participating in shopping and cooking those dinners. Hopefully that will encourage them to be a little more adventurous with what they eat!
I find that the kids eat better when we all eat together. And it actually feels pretty good not to eat so late, like it ends up being on the nights when we eat after them.
Enjoy your family dinners – I think you will all love it!
http://www.minipiccolini.com

These are very interesting. I really think it depends on your family set-up. If you are both coming home from work and picking up children, sitting down together would be quite tricky if the kids need to be in bed by 8pm at the latest. Perhaps aiming to always eat together at the weekend is less tiring and then it will be easier to phase weeknights in when they get bigger. Should be delicious, not boot camp!

That looks amazing!! How simple is it/how long does it take to prepare? I love the idea of this :)

My Blue Apron question: How long does it take the prepare the meals?

We try to eat together as a family every night. Sometimes my husband or I are late (we take turns with pick up), and sometimes one of us misses dinner entirely, but always someone is sitting with my son for dinner time. The challenge is getting a meal on the table by 6:30 (so we can still get the little dude in bed by 8). I would totally do Blue Apron if I felt like it would save us time. I’m all about out-sourcing to reduce stress whenever I can afford it. Certainly it saves time in meal planning and grocery shopping, but what about on the prep side?

I just ordered. Am excited to try it! Thanks

My son is eight months old, so he’s just learning to eat. He seems to do much better when we eat with him. He sees how we move food to our mouths and chew. We eat dinner every night as a family at about 6pm. Then we put the kido to bed, clean up, and then my husband and I often enjoy wine or dessert together, just the two of us.

would love to eat as a family (I grew up eating as a family every night!) but unfortunately my husband doesn’t get home early enough to accommodate this, so he and I eat after the kids are in bed, around 8:30. I really like that time to connect with him. We have family breakfast every morning! Hey, sometimes you just do what you can do.

I like Blue Apron but actually find that the prep can sometimes be very involved (chopping too many herbs, etc.). I sometimes use a company called Scratch DC (local to Washington, DC, sorry NYC)- they do a bit more of the prep, use locally sourced ingredients, and let you add things on like chips and salsa, side salads, and cookie dough. Beware though, it caters to grown-up couples, not families.
http://scratchdc.com/

We used to do the same thing–their dinner first, ours second. Then we had dinners at the table. Now that they’re teenagers and our schedules are all over the place, we split time between the table and the couch! Our version of dinner and a movie.

We always ate dinners as a family. I would’ve felt so left out if I knew my parents were hanging out and eating good food while I was moda in bed!

So is THAT why you had dinner with DALS the other night? ;) Pretty good mentors to have!

I’m from Australia and we eat 5 out of 7 dinners sometimes more with our children between 5pm and 6pm. It was a goal of ours last year that our two and four year old boys would eat with us. My husband starts work an hour to two hours earlier in order to get home at an earlier hour for their dinner. Yes it’s early for us to eat but we digest our meals better and sleep better as a result. We have a glass of wine together and a chat once our boys are asleep. Our boys are better behaved at restaurants and cafes as a result and their communication levels and manners are so much better as a result of our ritual. It’s busy, there are spills, sometimes tears but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. They are eating a greater variety of food as well.

love your flatware! do you mind sharing where you got them?

We ate as a family, at the table, for all of my childhood. I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I think it’s so important for the whole family to sit around the table together each day.

We had been doing the late dinners after Luna’s bedtime too, and we recently started having dinner as a family too. And I really do think she notices! Plus she ends up trying more variety of food because she usually likes to try ours which is normally a little spicy! Another thing we switched up was no TV Monday-Thursday (not even in the evenings) so it gives my husband and I more time to actually catch up, read & prep for the next day or get in bed early! I’m loving the no TV…it’s fun deciding what to watch (these days we are hooked on Celebrity Apprentice).

Dang!! I wish we would have done what you’ve been doing. Dinner early for the kids and a later dinner for the adults. My kids are 17 & 19 now, but that would have just been wonderful in our early years <3

When my son was younger and I was single, we ate separately. He was very picky, I had to cook really fast after getting home from work, and I didn’t always feel like eating like a picky preschooler.

Now that he’s ten (not to mention that I’m not single anymore and I get to design from home), we always eat together. It’s helped him bud into a real foodie, and we get to chat about our days, adult style.

We have never been organized enough to cook dinner twice, so it’s been family style from the get-go. I try to make sure there’s at least one component of the meal (even if it’s just rice) that the kids like, it doesn’t matter if they fill up on that once in a while. And they’re encouraged to try everything on the table!

You read my mind! I literally went to there website (finally) after seeing a commercial Saturday night. I remembered you had recommended it. I thought the family meals looked more enticing than the two person meals, but we are a house hold of two!

Mm the food really looks delicious, I love salmon!
Yes, I love lunches and dinners with my husband and we are trying to dine together everyday. He’s a great cook, so like you, I’m pouring the vine and enjoy his nice meals :)

We eat family meals all the time – we are a family of 3 (soon to be 4!) and our little guy is 19 months. He sits at the table with us and eats whatever we do (he loves spicy Mexican)! I do the cooking and would love to try it out, but it wouldn’t fit into our budget…and I’m in Canada, not sure it ships there!

Tonight – it is just Nate and I though – so we are hitting up a favorite restaurant :)

It seems like there is a study coming out every few months about how important family dinners are. We have always enjoyed it, and I really think it’s helpful in raising non-picky healthy-eating kids. I stay at home, and my husband used to get home pretty early, so we started eating dinner with our first child from the beginning (that was when he was nursing all evening long, and I had no choice). My husband recently got a new job and gets home a bit later than is ideal for the kids to eat. I am starving myself, and I hate to snack all evening and then eat dinner later. We are usually in the middle of dinner when my husband gets home, and he joins us. The boys finish up and then play nearby while I stay at the table. Then we have a bit of playtime, bedtime, and my husband and I get the rest of the night to hang out.

I never thought of feeding my children earlier unless we were going out for dinner. We always sat around the table together for dinner, even when they were small.

We´ve always had dinner together, it has just seemed to be the easiest solution for our family. :-)

http://tinajoathome.com/

We love our family dinners! Our daughter is just 3 1/2 but shes been sitting at the table with us since she was able. We tend to eat between 7-7.30 during the week and a little bit later on the weekends with date night exceptions. While in general I like the idea of the family plan (we love blue apron already), I definitely don’t agree with the idea of cooking down for the kids, ie kid friendly meals. I just think kids should be able to eat from the same menu as adults with maybe a few exceptions. We never order off the kids menu for my daughter and I think her palette is broader because of it. She eats what we eat and it makes dinner planning/cooking easier.

Haha- love the pic of you pouring the wine!