This has been a fascinating thread - I've really enjoyed the peek inside everyone's lives!

My house is a little bit opposite to a lot of you. The girls and I eat breakfast together every morning, and on the days one or both are home, we have lunch together.

But for dinner, they eat at 5.45pm - I discovered with E starting school this year she needs to eat about then to have time afterwards before going to bed by 7pm - she likes (and needs) her sleep, so is actually going to bed earlier than she used to! I generally prepare my meal while they are eating so I eat a bit later - I just really can't eat quite as early as them.

Growing up we always ate every meal together and I've been able to cook from a young age - I even beat all the old ladies in the CWA (Country Womens Association) in the Cinnamon Tea Cake cooking comp in their annual cooking contest when I was about 12 LOL. My brothers are all pretty good cooks too and love experimenting.

I used to always LOVE to cook, but since discovering how extensive the girls allergies & intolerances are, and for over 2 years cooking from scratch every single thing that entered their mouth (I even used to make their own butter/marg substitute!), I'm totally over it!

These days, we are slowly expanding their diet as they outgrow some of their intolerances, so I can now buy the odd ready made thing like pasta, for them to give them a bit of variety and me a break from the constant cooking.

We still can't go out for dinner or anything like that because no one caters for such extensive allergies, so as long as the girls aren't with their Dad, we always eat at home. I generally eat out on the weekends I don't have the girls though - for a break and a bit of variety (still within my own allergy constraints - dairy & wheat)! I would love to be able to take the girls out though so I can teach them how to eat out in public... but hopefully learning regular table manners (and I have high standards) will help in the meantime.

I must admit, I absolutely love to cook sweets - cakes, desserts etc - and prefer to eat them too!!! I'm not really a huge savouries cook - prefer someone else to cook them for me!

If we are in we all eat together. I'm not much of a cook so either my mum or brother and his girlfriend cook, I prefer to wash up afterwards. Most stuff is not from scatch mostly frozen stuff. If BF and I eat together it's frequently take out at the table or in front of the TV. I love the idea of home cooked wholesome from scratch foods eaten every night at the table x

Count me in as one of the money-wasters who eats out a lot!

I grew up eating dinner at the table with my family, and honestly, it doesn't give me warm fuzzy memories. My mother was a terrible, terrible cook, and she got no pleasure out of it at all. All of my memories are of her coming home frazzled from work and trying to coordinate all the pots on the stove and in the end boiling everything to death. I had no idea vegetables weren't supposed to be limp and tasteless until my late 30s when I tried cooking myself (begrudgingly).

It's only been in the last 5 years that I've taught myself how to cook, and even then only a few standards. But I have finally learned how good fresh well-cooked vegetables and meats can be, and I seek them out whether in a restaurant or at home. But when my husband and I do eat at home, it's in front of the TV -- and that part I miss. As terrible as the food was, and as much as we fought as kids at the table, I do miss sitting around the table at the end of the day and being a family. I think that's why I like eating out, because we are at a table and not at the TV.

I love to cook and bake and can't understand people who say that they can't (how hard is it to follow a recipe?). My DH and I share the cooking - DH cooked a roast chicken last night and tonight he is making a quiche and salad.

We always ate at the table as a family and I spent a lot of time around my mother and grandmothers as they cooked and baked, so picked up things as I went along. I baked my first sponge cake solo when I was 7.

I find cooking relaxing and I love to cook for my friends and we often have people over for dinner and lunch in the weekends. I have a massive cook book collection and I follow a lot of cooking blogs - including Ele's!

I find shopping in supermarkets uninspiring and prefer fresh food markets - especially because you can talk to the store holder about how to cook something and taste as you go along.

In summer I love salads - at the moment my favourite is rocket, roast squash, semi-dried tomatoes, feta and toasted cashew nuts with a honey-mustard dressing. I also love roasted beetroot with goats cheese!

I guess here in Portugal most people cook and dinner together. We are latines! Family around the table is a must!
I don't love cooking but I always do, soups, salads, fish. I'm very lucky because I'm on diet and my family eats what I eat, they don't like cookies and desserts so I never do that.

Dawn, tell Alan that you'd be overjoyed if he wants to cook (to his perfectionist standards) every night!

Anne, we (and by "we" I mean mostly my husband, because he's retired and I'm still working) freeze a ton of stuff we cook and pull it out when needed. If you cooked it and froze it, it's still made from scratch.

When my son is here, I cook nearly every night, and we sit and eat and talk together. During baseball season things get trickier because the weeknight games are often at 6:00. On those nights he'll have "dinner" at around 4:30, then another dinner with me at 8:30 or 9:00, when the game ends.

I do think it's important to eat together. Not a fan of the phrase "quality time" so in honor of Angie, how about a Dutch word: gezelligheid.

It is interesting to peek into everyone's eating habits.I cook on a regular basis and have dinners together as a family.I cook extensively on weekdays and make simple meals on weekends as we are out and about with the kids.We love to eat out every few weeks.The SO has recently started helping with loading the dishwasher,so I actually enjoying cooking for the family.

Are any of you non-cooks irrationally attracted to places like Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table? As I said, I really don't like to cook, but those stores makes it look so FUN! and EXCITING! that all of a sudden I feel like maybe there's a cook hiding in me after all.

Of course, it's just the incredible marketing. And the fact that I'm so susceptible to it. I actually considered taking a Knife class once. For about 30 seconds. :O

Sometimes I feel like I cook three meals each night, because my husband doesn't get home in time to eat with the boys and I. It's a function of living in a big city where the commute is long, and young kids who can't wait until 6:30 to eat. I don't blame them.

So I wind up making dinner for the boys, something different for me (sometimes we eat the same thing but sometimes I know they just won't eat it), and then when my husband gets home I need to make his dinner, after the kitchen has already been cleaned up.

It's pretty disjointed and I feel that from 5-8 p.m. I am in the kitchen cooking or cleaning up someone's meal. And after my husband is done eating, then the boys are back in the kitchen looking for a snack. Is it any wonder mothers are exhausted?

My mom started us in the kitchen at a young age. "Dinner time" included prep and clean up as well. Nobody left the kitchen till it was done, and nobody started anything till we were all there.
Bryan and I continue the tradition. Our meals are very specific for our fitness/diet plans so eating out is very rare. We work out right before dinner (together of course). Our dinners start out with me feeding the kitties (begging is a no no, but I can't say no to the precious eyes, so I just distract them with their own food) and then Bryan and I prepare food together, eat together, then clean up together.
Then we veg on the couch with a glass of wine and play games or watch TV.

Judy, I have just had a chance to look at the video now, what a lovely family!

Laura, your dilemma reminds me of my childhood - we were not permitted to eat with our parents until we were some reasonable age (7? 8? something like that). Our mother fed us at 5:00 pm, because children needed to eat early and go to bed early, and weren't supposed to intrude on adults' sophisticated conversation and late dining. Frequently we were in bed before our father (who had a long commute and was very dedicated to his job) even came home.

When my own children were little, my husband was the exact opposite of my father - dedicated to his family rather than his job. He was always home by 6:00 pm. It was funny, because many of the SAHMs in my neighborhood got together around 5:30 or 6:00 for drinks, because none of their workaholic husbands got home until much later. I was sometimes annoyed that I couldn't join these little "Housewives of Arlington County" soirees.

Fi, I'm going to try that salad! I LOVE roast squash and have been getting crooknecks in my box.

Laura- save yourself some sanity and stop cooking separate meals for everyone!

I was brought up in a family that cooked from scratch and ate almost all meals together. I was a disaster in the kitchen when at home and didn't learn to cook until after marriage. I found that, like any school subject, it's often a matter of learning the vocabulary...like what "saute" or "simmer" means.
DH and I prepare meals together much of the time if he's home. That helps keep daily meals from becoming a wearisome to prepare. He enjoys recreating meals he's had on business trips and judges our homecooked meal by whether or not he'd "order that again" if he'd had it in a restaurant.
It also gave our sons a great example to follow and both cook. One enjoys the challenge of cooking exotic foods and has taken several cooking classes. The other started by wanting to learn how to cook his favorite foods once he was on his own. We always ate together, no TV. They learned as preschoolers how to use chopsticks.
About families today eating meals together, I teach classes a couple of days a week from 4:30 to 6:00pm (9-12 yr olds). It's shocking to me how many families grab fast food and eat in the car running from one activity to another nearly every night. Family meals are rare. Children seem overly scheduled with no down time, even to eat.

Oh so many good responses here!

Dawn, my (2nd)husband is a bit of a perfectionist too. Early in our relationship, he began to "critique" something I'd made. I had to go all Joan (like in Mad Men) on him and diplomatically tell him "The only appropriate response when someone has made you food is 'Thank you'! " To his credit he took it to heart. He is really appreciative. He actually has a more discerning palate than me but takes cooking too seriously to have any fun with it.

Laura, when I had really small children I fed them early too. Mine were not quiet and calm like little Lu in the video. Mine were two rambunctious boys that needed exercise like a couple of pit bulls, in order to sit for meals with or without us. But eating with the very young is a labor of love, isn't it? Spills, tears, emergency bathroom trips. "Why didn't you go before you sat down???" It gets better!

I wonder about the over scheduling of kids too, Joy. My (1st) husband and I were both from very large families and never got to do any of those kinds of things like lessons. I did it with my much fewer kids in moderation. My kids didn't really like sports, but they did music things. The rest of the time I expected them to entertain themselves. I kind of believe in "boredom" for the sake of creativity. How many times did I tell my kids when they said there was nothing to do how great it was because otherwise maybe Shakespeare would have never written his plays if he had no down time. Oh they really loved that. It was kind of cute to see them try and figure it out..."who's that??" At least it distracted them and gave them some perspective :).

I have a sort of love/hate relationship to cooking. I enjoy it for the most part, but only if I'm not feeling rushed. For the most part, I stick to recipes because I still don't know what spices work best in each dish.

I started out making my own baby food out of organic vegetables and swearing I wasn't going to raise picky eaters, but then my first son had sensory issues and ended up needing a feeding specialist to eat at all. For years we just focused on simple foods he would eat, and in turn, I now have not one, but TWO fairly picky eaters, which makes adventuresome dinners difficult. But I'm a little relieved that my kids will still eat some things other kids turn their noses up at, like salmon, shrimp, zucchini bread, broccoli...

We eat out and order pizza more often than I'd like, but we're still eating as a family.

My younger son is always trying to help me in the kitchen. He and I just baked cookies on Sunday. Both kids can sit and watch the Food Network with me and seem to find it as fascinating as I do.

My husband and I recently bought a wok and having been learning to use it. He's rarely cooked in the past but made dinner by himself last week (woo hoo!) and it was incredible. We've come to the realization that we make better Chinese food than any of the Chinese restaurants in our area.

I remember eating dinner together as a family as a young child, but I think as the kids grew into teenagers and had various activities, the family dinners kind of stopped. And actually, that's really sad, because I think that's one of the times when kids really need those family dinners to talk to and have time with their parents and siblings.

Really nice video. I love to cook. It's a great way to relax and unwind and produce something that everyone in my family or often my friends can enjoy in a tangible way. My husband helps occsasionally though more out of necessity than love of cooking.

Thanks all for sharing your stories. I really liked hearing how you do dinner. As we ate our tacos tonight...I made some very delicious lentils a few days ago...and salad, I thought of all of us YLF'rs doing all that good cooking and eating.

I've learned a lot from Food Network too. Love Jamie Oliver! His "At Home" series, that house he had, and the garden and how he cooked outside and him throwing his compost over his shoulder, too good!

I was reflecting today on what makes meals special and my mind flashed back to a lunch I shared with a dear sister in law and her new baby. We bought baguettes and brie and sat in her beat up Volvo wagon and had the best time parked on some side street in San Francisco. Oh no, I'm getting teary again! I'm going to have to go back to the "what makes you teary" thread. It surprised me because it happened SO long ago. No special food or table settings....though all that is fun too. But it was a moment, you know? It's like they said in the video, appreciation makes it special.

I make most of our vegan meals from scratch, with the occasional frozen veg burger or vegan pizza thrown into the mix. It truly is a labor of love, especially since everyone has dietary "sub" issues: gluten-free hubby, 2 picky toddlers, my ongoing experiments...ugh.

For the most part, we do eat together. But oftentimes that means that 3 of us are seated for the meal, and one of us is a "server," who ends up consuming their food in intervals between order-taking.

Before kids, when we lived in SF, we ate out waaaay more. It was like gastronomic heaven. *sigh* Those were the days...

I adore cooking and baking and wish I had more time to dedicate to it.

When I was growing up we always had dinner together. My mom was a decent cook and we all sat at the table together. If I had children, we would most certainly carry on the tradition.

As it is, we have no children and no actual dinner table. However most evenings (IOW those that I'm not working) we eat home cooked meals. I was never very into food as a child and didn't learn to cook until I had to feed myself in college. That's when I began to love food.

My DH doesn't cook but that's fine. I like to make old standards like spaghetti and meatballs (tonight's dinner) but I also love to cook Indian and Thai. You name it, I probably like to cook it. Salads and grilled food in summer are wonderful. It's been cool here in Seattle the last few days so tonight I baked an apricot galette. YUM!
http://i256.photobucket.com/al.....ricot2.jpg if you can view it.

Random thoughts, your pastry looks so delicious. I'd like to have it for breakfast, right now!

As I'm finding more and more recipies for yummy entrees that are fairly quick to make, I'm enjoying the process of cooking more. I cook three times a week with lots of leftovers. I usually cook beef on Tuesdays, fish on Thursdays and chicken on Saturdays. We go out to eat on Friday night before we go grocery shopping and also for lunch after church on Sundays. When the kids were babies and toddlers, we used to eat out/get take-out 5 or more times a week! ACK!

As a SAHM, I eat all my meals with the kids. This year I started having them join me in the kitchen and we'll prepare our breakfasts and lunches together. Usually on the days I cook dinner, whoever is done with homework, will help me out in the kitchen. If I'm running behind, hubby is a great help and he often wlll do the dishes without my even asking. LOVE this man!!!

I have fond childhood memories of big family gatherings on my father's side. I remember one occassion during the summer where we all gathered in the garage (with the door open) to dine on the ping pong table so the kids could all sit while the adults fit in where they could. Lots of commotion and laughter and food... it was the best!

I grew up surrounded by excellent cooks. My mom, our housekeeper/nanny (who was more like family), and eventually my university housemate. All of them shared a fear that I'd torch the house if I cooked on my own, but they all talked to me about what they were doing and let me help with really basic things. They also refined my taste for good food and instilled me with a desire to equal them eventually. So when I moved out on my own, I set about teaching myself. I now love to cook and bake and have gotten pretty good at both. I even passed muster with my original roll models! I'm not super fast, so I prefer to cook without time pressure. I do the bulk of it on the weekends, preparing things Corey and I can eat throughout the week. But because I love good food in general, I'm just as happy to eat out or order in (some fabulous restaurants deliver around me).
Corey and I don't always eat together in the evening, in fact we eat apart more often than not. We've recently resolved to work on this.
To this day, one of my favourite things about visiting my parents is the family meal we all enjoy. It reminds me of similar times growing up and makes me feel close to everyone.
Childhood dinners started as separate affairs with my brother and i eating ahead of the adults. Family meals became more common as we aged, though they weren't always possible with my various musical pursuits and practices, social engagements etc. Mom insisted that Sunday night was family night, and we always had a more elaborate family dinner that night. If friends were around, they were always welcome to join, too. I loved that tradition.

We eat out more than we should. I just really don't like cooking and I'm really pretty bad at it. I wish it were as simple as following the recipe, but either I'm terrible at picking recipes or there's some hidden logic in there that I'm missing, because things often turn out really badly when I cook. (like the one time I made a new casserole with ground beef and the recipe did *not* say to brown it first and it came out of the oven bloody, um, yeah, we went out for dinner that night). I can mess up instant rice and I don't get it. We do eat together almost every night, though. On the rare occasion that DH needs to work late, the kids and I will go pick him up and take him out for dinner and then he goes back and stays really late (his choice - if he's not going to be home before the kids' go to bed, he'd rather do it all in one night instead of having to miss them multiple days) until he gets his project done. (of course, I say this after I sent DH and the kids out for dinner without me last night. I was completely at the end of my rope and needed some quiet. I had mac & cheese and a glass of wine in peace and quiet and I was in a much better mood after that!