Time to eat Dinner?

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csalt

Sous Chef
Joined
Jul 23, 2006
Messages
909
Most often we like to have 'dinner' in the middle of the day if it fits in with other activities. Sometimes we have it around 5.30p.m. ( I read somewhere this a bad time to eat but don't know why!)

We try not to eat too late at night because if we do there are some things which will give my husband indigestion all night.

What do you like to do? It's easier for us because we are both now retired.

In Norfolk UK there are many pubs around which do wonderful food at affordable prices and in beautiful scenery. (Near the coast)
 
Loprraine said:
We have to eat by 7pm at the latest, otherwise one person gets past the point of being hungry, and just gets cranky.
:LOL: :ohmy: :ROFLMAO:
 
We have a two year old so our dinner time is earlier than it used to be. We generally eat dinner around 6-6:30 pm.
 
Growing up on Long Island, New York, my dad commuted into NYC, which meant he caught a 5:30 a.m. train (yup - a 5:30 a.m. train) & didn't get home until between 7 & 8 p.m., if he was lucky. He did this for over 35 years so that we could grow up "in the country, by the water". He's like a God to me!!

That said, depending on when he "thought" he'd be getting home (& remember, this was way, way, way before the time of cell phones), mom either fed us kids early, or we waited for dad. Usually we waited for dad. My brother & I were definitely "good" kids (as in non-bratty, crying, whining types), & readily amused ourselves with board games & reading (both of us learned to read by Age 4 due to parents willing to spend the time to read to us from the toddler stage). So we frequently didn't have dinner until 8 p.m.

Now on Sundays, dinner was most DEFINITELY the afternoon meal, & a big one. Always a big roast (beef or pork), Czech chicken fricasee with dumplings, etc., etc., & served promptly between 1 & 2 p.m. If anyone was hungry later on, there were always cold cuts & condiments for sandwiches.

These days, I'm still sort of stuck in semi-late dining, as my husband doesn't usually get home from work until between 6:30-7:30 p.m. depending on traffic, so I try to plan either quick meals or meals that can be cooked ahead & can wait. As for weekend meals, while we do have them earlier, we've definitely nixed the afternoon biggy. It just doesn't fit into the farm lifestyle very well - lol!!
 
My father was a country doctor and it was important to have a "regular" dinner time. Most of the time our evening meal was on the table no later than 6 p.m. Because of his demanding schedule and because he was the only doctor in the county, we used to joke that he'd run in the front door, grab a chicken leg in the kitchen and run out the back door to his car for a house call or such. "Fast" food meant something quite different to him.

I've never been one for eating at that hour. Because of jobs and commuting during the time we were raising our 5 children, dinner usually made it to the table by 7 or 7:30 p.m. We've kept that schedule for over 30 years.

Now that it's just the two of us, we eat even a bit later. That's mostly because we don't have breakfast until about 9:30 a.m. and lunch at about 1 p.m. or so. We also stay up pretty late, which means we're not going to bed after having our heaviest meal of the day. It seems to work for us.
 
I can remember living with my grandparents as a child,because the doctors took my father off work, so stress could be eased,put him on a no food,just cream and milk every hour or so and some awful pills he had to chew to quiet his tummy..Dad had ulcers that were bleeding and they wanted to remove part of his stomach.Dad, said no way, I'm going to try something else. So dinner time for the rest of us was at 5-5:30 be there or else. Poor dad would even turn green at food smells. But one day I suppose he's had enough and when my grandmother began making one of his biggest pleasures, liver with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes, peas the works, he got up walked into the dinning room, sat at the table and said, I'm eating this even if it kills me..once again good cooking won:) He ate his meal, had a glass of milk, went out and sat in the swing on the front porch. From then on even after we moved and cooking was turned over to me ( I was 11) dinner was on the table by 5:30..I still am close to that time even now, but have upped it to 6..Funny how things change but say the same!
kadesma
 
Mealtimes have changed over the years.

When I was a kid, we ate around 6:00 PM. After dinner, dad would dictate recipes and menus for me to type on an old portable typewriter. Dad was a managing chef for company that ran in plant cafeterias.

When I was married with young children, dinner was as soon as I got home from work. Then we would do homework, read stories, play games, etc.

As a born again single, I ate whenever. Usually around 7:30 - 8:00.

No we eat dinner around 7:30 - 8:00. SO gets home around 6:30 and we relax with a glass of wine and catch up on the day's events before dinner.
 
I love this thread. Love reading everyone's stories. Love them.
My DH gets home erratically as his drive to/from work is 63 miles one way.
I wake up early [5 AM-ish] to get him off to work and make his coffee/breakfast and kiss him good-bye. So, when I'm not working, I am in my kitchen and up and runnin really early, which is why when I start this thread, it's often times around 6 AM in my house. I start dinner early, in the morning often. Cause I can't wait. It's this crazed love for cooking that I have always had. I get an idea and want to run with it.
But, dinner is late in our household. It should be early as he suffers from Acid Reflux really bad. But it never fails that it just can't make it to the table very early. So easily around 7:30-8:00 or later.:shock:
 
Ha, I wake up around the time you all eat dinner : P I have breakfast at 4pm, usually get hungry for lunch around 8 and eat dinner around midnight. But then I only go to bed around 7 or 8 in the morning. On our days off we eat dinner a bit earlier since we're usually out running around around lunchtime and we skip it, but then we get a craving for dessert in the middle of the night : )
 
These ' snapshots' of your lives have been so interesting to read. There's so much warmth and fun in all of them. Memories are really precious even the sad ones.

Maybe we should have another thread of best memory and worst memory so that we can carry on sharing the memories.:)
 
Well, for me "dinner" is always an evening meal, usually formal! My family get quite bogged down by this, probably partly because of the many meals my greatgrandpernets generation ate (In my family these ancestors are still seen as the head of the family, such was my great grandfathers involvement in everyones lives!). Even now my mind runs along their food day, and I think i have "missed" meals I would never need or want, lol!

On waking the kids would grab a glass of milk and an apple before tending to the farm or stable yard chores as they best could help those whose jobs it was to do those things. Then, after that, maybe at 8 ish there was breakfast. never had one of these legendary breakfasts but often they ate steak! It was a big, meal, feeding hungry people who had already done some hours work and had a long day ahead! At eleven their might be a snack with a drink, now I suppose that is elevenses!. Lunch or lunchoen, still is observed when the family is together. It tends to be the main meal when we are in a family and in that case we take it at about two, sometimes, like christmas, it is later in the afternoon, occasionally earlier. If we are with DH's family, of town heritage breakfast is always eight am, lunch is always one, no deviation! Back at my house, if there are children, or visitors then tea is brought out at four, maybe 4:30. If my mother is with us for tea and we have guests it is still a formal snack. Always two types of sandwhich, perhaps another savoury, an uncut cake and a cut cake. If it is just family its more likely to me a cup of tea with a biscuit of piece of fruit. If "tea" is to be the main evening meal, ie if it is not a high day and we have children at home then it is more substantial and no early than 4:30 perhaps as late as six. There will always be aat least one warm thing for children's tummies! Dinner is between 7 and about 9, and in our family suggests a large formal or semi formal meal. Then there is supper, the last meal of the day, taken between 8 and about an hour before bed, and therefore light. Its strictly an adult only meal to be taken when there has been no dinner and is just to keep you feeling warm and satisfied and is informal.

In my grandmother's house, right up until she died last year, the makings for ALL of these options were in the house at anytime, because who knew what the day would hold? My great aunt still follows this maxim, though sadly, has less oppertunity to fill it. I oo feel the need to be able to provide any/all of these meals, though of course, I rarely ever have to!

Now, in the city we take morning coffee togther, I perhaps eat an apple, and DH goes to work, where he has snacks all day long, on Friday a formal breakfast with his colleagues and perhaps lunches through the day. I have a snacky lunch, because I don't want to eat uch, so maybe soup hopefully towards the summer this becomes salad! Occasionally there are after work thingies, which here in Italy come well stocked with things to nibble. We usually have supper which is, regretably as I feel like I have my day backwards now, our most substantial meal.

Meals and timings are the constant in the heart of my family, and have held fueding families together so whilst we neither work hard enough to justify the old menu, nor could eat it, someone will always be able to cater for it, because when you can hardly speak to a sibling or an aunt or a parent or a child, there is always the comfort of knowing the immovable tradition of our meals, lol!
 
For me, dinner is the midday meal and supper is the meal you eat in the evening.

When I was growing up in a small town in Indiana, my father insisted that dinner was on the table at 5pm. My parents divorced when I was 11 and it was a free-for-all from there. Most of high school I made my own food or bought it on the run. I had a horrible diet and never a consistent evening meal time.

Right after college, I moved to Moscow, Russia. I got into the habit of late suppers like most of Europe. A lot of the time, I didn't sit down to supper until 9pm and didn't get up from the table until after midnight.

It has kind of stuck for me. Dh had joined the "slow food" movement in the US (New Jersey) before we got married and he is from Turkey, so a long suppertime is kind of normal for us now, vis-a-vis his influence. Suppertime is often as late at 8pm. 5pm is for tea and a snack.
 
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