How did you have your main meal growing up?

[licia]

Thanks for the sympathy notes. I suppose eating veggies is what got Mom to her ripe old age.

BTW, I'm one of the "crazies" that keep phone messages from relatives. I had one of my dad and also my brother. Mom never left a message but I knew I'd better get back to her right away.

 

[Addie]

Oh Addie, I have so many memories of our little store and I can still see it in my mind's eye, complete with a big jar of pickled pigs feet on the meat case counter. There sure wasn't one on every corner or we wouldn't have been able to survive. I remember when the first "super market" came into the area and Daddy and I went there to scope out the prices and check out the place, with packaged meat and every color of bar soap. Remember colored bar soap? We sure didn't have shelf space for every color of bar soap or colored toilet paper either. What a horror that all their meat was packaged without a butcher like my Dad.

It turned out that our loyal customers who had their personal charge accounts stayed with us even with the "super market" near by. We hardly ever had a problem with people paying at the end of the month.
Dad had the best meat money could buy, and cut to order wrapped in butcher paper. Cooking advice was available for the asking. I often went with my Mom to deliver groceries to customers who needed the free service. Dad was too smart to give food away when people asked for it, but he often handed them a broom or had them stock some shelves in exchange. Oh how I miss them, and that childhood.
Klemm's Loma Vista Market...circa 1946-1963.

Kayelle, glad I could evoke your memories again.

 

[Addie]

I don't think my parents ever left me any voice mail. It would be great to have that now that they are both gone.

I think if I were to hear my mother's voice right now, I would freak out and fall apart. The same with hearing my daughter Maureen's. I just wouldn't be able to handle it. For a while after my sister died, her phone was still connected. I would call it just to hear her voice. I don't think I could do it today.

 

[Cheryl J]

Steve's thread about butter that went just a little off topic about 'eating when you're hungry' reminded me of this fun thread. I just wanted to bump it up for new members who might want to join in and share stories.

I grew up having dinner at a certain time every day which was quite rigid, but now enjoy a way different schedule...if you can even call it that. These days I really enjoy having a late breakfast, the main meal done and kitchen cleaned up by 4 or 5ish, and maybe a little snacking during the day. Anyone else want to add to this thread from 2014?

 

[Cooking Goddess]

We go "off topic" around here? Huh, who would have thought?

Thanks for finding this, Cheryl. It will be fun to re-read...and find out how much we went OT in THIS one!

 

[Cheryl J]

Some of the best reading goes off topic!

 

[CrazyCatLady]

Dinner was 6:30pm sharp. My stupid older sister refused to come, and there were fights about that until she was out of the house and we could eat in peace.

Then, I loved dinnertime! Daddy would tell funny jokes, Mommy would talk about her students, and then I got to tell them about my day at school and ask them about some paper I was working on, or a report, or a test coming up.

Once, in 7th grade, I broke my arm in a skating field day. We all went to the skating rink, and the school bully tripped me and I fell and broke my left wrist. Daddy came to the hospital and took me home. I walked in, hurting ... and wow, Mommy had dinner going and it was her beef Stroganoff.

My favorite! That dinner was the best in the world! Mommy cut up the meat for me, and I swear I died and went to food Heaven!

And I got out of the hospital in time. Daddy got me home in time for dinner at 6:30 pm sharp.

 

[Addie]

Right now I have Pirate living with me. We only eat when we are hungry. And that is not always at the same time for the both of us. But once a week, usually on a Sunday, we have a big meal and sit down together. Or at least we try to. It depends on if we feel like cooking and who is going to do it. Pirate always has breakfast, me never. He also tries to have something for lunch, never me. Then come supper and we each cook for ourselves. Most often two different meals. But we are polite enough to ask the other if they want any.

My kitchen is very narrow, but long. Difficult to have two people cooking in there at the same time. He usually cooks his meal first, and me much later. Pirate often comments about the times around the childhood table. His memories are more romanticized than mine where when he was a kid. He thinks they were fun, I think of chaos only. Perhaps I have just become cynical as the years go by. But I do know that when the family gets together for holiday meals, they do have fun talking and sharing memories of their childhood.

 

[rodentraiser]

Dinnertime was not pleasant when I was growing up. We ate in the kitchen about 5pm. My dad ate in the living room watching TV. I don't think I ever sat down to a meal with my dad. Probably just as well.

I was (still am) a picky eater and hated vegetables and milk. So most nights I would be made to sit at the table to eat my vegetables and drink my milk until my mom wanted to do dishes. Then if I hadn't finished dinner (I don't remember that I ever did), I was sent to bed early.

I still eat very few vegetables and I haven't drunk a glass of milk for over forty years. Just goes to show that forcing a child to eat what they don't like never works.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

We girls fixed dinner and it was ready by the time my parents got home. We all ate together. As we got older and have after school work or activities, the cooking schedule was bent and twisted as to who made dinner and who was at the table. I miss our family meals.

 

[CraigC]

After my mother took my father back and my grandmother no longer lived with us, dinner mostly came in styro containers. When it was actually made at home, I wished it was from the styro container places. On the bright side, those meals ended up being the biggest spark for me to learn to cook.

 

[Souschef]

My sister and I were fed first, before my dad got home, because we had a really tiny kitchen. There was just enough room for a small kitchen table.
My mom was a lousy cook, and my dad liked Green Giant french cut green beans from a can.
He needed all his meat well done, and could not abide lamb. Thank goodness that did not affect me. My motto now is, if it does not move I will try it once.

 

[jd_1138]

We ate around the kitchen table and had to finish up everything or else we couldn't leave the table. I remember sitting there for an hour after everyone else was done because I didn't want to finish my peas. Now I love peas.

My dad came home from work at 5:30 (mechanic for the county bus dept). We ate at 6 sharp and my mom was a stay at home mom, so we were like the Brady Bunch (4 kids, not 6). Even had the same station wagon (Plymouth Fury Suburban 9 passenger).

 

[CWS4322]

I know this is an old post. I thought every one ate in the kitchen at 6:30 and went to bed at 7:30. We only ate at the table w our parents on holidays, that is until they moved when I was 7:30--then they had no choice!!!

 

[Andy M.]

I've noticed that a number of us commented that we weren't allowed to leave the table until we finished our meal. I wonder how many of those people treated their own children the same way? Did you force your children to stay at the table until they clean their plates or were you more lenient than your own parents?

 

[jd_1138]

I've noticed that a number of us commented that we weren't allowed to leave the table until we finished our meal. I wonder how many of those people treated their own children the same way? Did you force your children to stay at the table until they clean their plates or were you more lenient than your own parents?

Now it seems the inmates run the asylum. And many kids are allowed to eat whatever and whenever they want -- chicken nuggets, french fries, ketchup. I know parents who have to force them to drink a nutrition shake (for elderly people) so they won't get scurvy.

 

[Dawgluver]

I would never force a child to sit until they cleaned their plate. Kids will eat when they need to, and will not starve.

I remember when I was a "mascot" for the local HS cheerleading squad, I was about 4 or 5 years old, and prior to the game, was faced with a bowl of chili I really didn't like. Mom insisted that I wouldn't get to go to the game unless I finished it. I waited her out.

I think parenting feeding methods have changed a lot over the years, thank goodness.

 

[Cheryl J]

I wouldn't have dreamed of forcing my girls to clean their plates. Neither do they, now that they're grown with children of their own.

When my girls got old enough to serve themselves at the table, I did encourage them to not load up their plate sky high the first time. If they wanted more, there was always seconds.

I usually encouraged them to at least try one bite of a new food, and if they didn't like it, that was fine. I'd just try again in a few months or so.


I agree Dawg, I think things have changed over the years in that respect, I like to think it's for the better, too.

 

[Kayelle]

I used the three bite rule with my kids, before they could proclaim they didn't like it.

As for me, I grew up with what many would consider "icky" foods like kidney, tongue, brains, liver all due to being a butchers daughter. I never thought a thing about it until I was old enough to find out not everybody ate those things. I was never forced to eat anything either, except for the "three bite" rule. Mama said the 1st was for bravery, the 2nd for the taste buds, and the 3rd for the opinion. Smart woman she was.

 

[CrazyCatLady]

When I was a Mom, Jennifer was able to leave the table when she finished her meal. But she was such an active kid, loved to eat, so usually she was done before we were, even with second helpings.

But she aways had a clean plate, and asked to be excused. She put her plates in the sink, and always came back to help with cleaning up. To this day, she does the same with my grandson, and he loves to eat too.

Monster eaters!