Anyone else have a family that don't eat 'tea' together?

[Pileonsally]

Our friends think we are strange but we are a family of 4 and only eat tea together on Sundays.
The rest of the week everyone makes their own tea. If 2 people want the same thing they have it together. Otherwise everyone fends for themselves.
Kids are teenagers now so fine but when they were younger either me or DH made them what they wanted..or sometimes the same thing, sometimes not.

When I chat to my friends there seems to be an awful lot of 'tea tension in houses. Who makes tea, who thinks of tea, who shops for tea, what time we hsve tea..it seems trivial but endless.

We have zero rows or arguments about tea in our house and never have.

Surely we can't be only house who doesn't have tea together?

Before anyone says it..we are close family, lots of laughs together, we spend time together in other ways. Both kids have said they like the fact that they not tied to a 'teatime'

I’m 57, have never not eaten the same food or at the same time as everyone else, as a child, a young adult living at home or now married with a 17 year old. I might occasionally do a different part of the meal, say someone wants a fried egg instead of beans with their sausage and chips or do another veg for someone who hates sprouts but that’s it.
It makes meal times a whole lot easier.

@SpookyScarySkeletons so really it's still one person carrying the mental load of planning and cooking what other people like! The rest of the family just get to choose from a menu of mum's batch cooking. If it works for you, fab.

Like I said, we don't argue over food anyway and I quite like cooking so the mental load bit doesn't worry me much. I accept I've probably hit lucky with us all being fairly decent / unfussy eaters. I'll probably get it back when one decides on a raw food diet at 15 or becomes one of the militant vegans that seem to plague MNers!

@MeredithGreyishblue not at all!! You are assuming that it's all me...

Me and DH devise the meal plan together, he does the lions share of the cooking as I'm disabled and can't stand for long, I'll do most of the prep on my perching stool and he will help me to batch cook too. It's a joint effort shared with DC as they are both old enough to cook a meal and regularly do.

I'm mildly insulted by your insinuation.

So before the DC learned to prepare reasonably nutritious meals for themselves, independently, assuming that’s what they now do, each evening you and DH prepared what they each wanted, and what you each wanted?

And taught them how to plan and prepare sensible meals?

That’s fair enough: your time and energy, you chose to use it that way.

YABU though for suggesting that your approach = fewer negatives about food for your family than your friends’ families, with different approaches.

[quote SpookyScarySkeletons]@MeredithGreyishblue not at all!! You are assuming that it's all me...

Me and DH devise the meal plan together, he does the lions share of the cooking as I'm disabled and can't stand for long, I'll do most of the prep on my perching stool and he will help me to batch cook too. It's a joint effort shared with DC as they are both old enough to cook a meal and regularly do.

I'm mildly insulted by your insinuation. [/quote]
Your post said it was you. You literally talk about what you cook! It wasn't an insult in any case. I'm more curious about the people who all like different meals entirely. Like what do they all eat so differently.

The mental load bit wasn't particularly aimed at you - it was mentioned upthread. I do assume that with food and it doesn't bother me. I also assume it with uniforms/trips/having kids clothes that fit. That bit does! But then I suppose I never think about other things that make our home work that DH does. I can't imagine arguing about food. Food is the best bit of the day!

No, we don't. Family of 6 just all eat different times!

Yes we're the same. I've never got into the routine of doing a weekly supermarket shop. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes, frankly. We have 2 Co-Ops and a decent village shop all in very close walking distance, so we've always popped in to them most days to pick up whatever we fancy for dinner that night. It works for us because both our DDs have busy social lives so it's rare they're both home at 'tea time' anyway. We also buy a lot of Cook meals + sides so there's zero stress about cooking/deciding what to eat. And we always eat out at weekends, so again just zero stress.

Husband works shifts so he's either coming in from work or leaving for work way past DD's tea time. As a result we rarely eat together and sort ourselves out. He's also ridiculously fussy and eats rubbish so we'd be eating different things anyway. It's much easier this way.

I think it’s a bit sad though. Family dinner times are the best bit of having kids in my opinion.

We eat together at the table every evening. It’s lovely having a nice chat together and sharing food.

@WalkingOnSonshine

It must cost you a fortune in food, particularly with how much prices have gone up. Plus water waste in washing up.

Do you find that you have a lot of food waste if someone changes their mind?

We grew up all eating together/the same thing? Obviously not every meal was a favourite, but meant that we learnt that we just couldn’t get our own way every day. Also none of us are fussy eaters - we eat everything.

We’re bringing baby DS up the same way. He can leave what he doesn’t like, but we don’t cook separate for him.

It's a very different scenario when you have teenagers with their own lives.

Seems very odd to me. We eat together, when the kids are home (university) they eat with us, non negotiable. Obviously if they are out doing something they can reheat in the microwave but 99% of meals are eaten together

We mostly eat together. 21 year old dd at uni but living at home. Dinner usually at 6pm ish. If anyone not home it’s heated up later.

But what's the alternative? Because in a lot of cases it's the woman in the household taking on all the mental load of trying to come up with meals that everyone will eat, or cooking several different meals and half the time, eating what everyone else wants, and never getting what she actually wants to eat herself

We have a discussion every Saturday morning about what will eat for the coming week. Anyone who doesn't contribute to that discussion doesn't have the right to complain. Why on earth wouldn't the woman get to eat their favourites sometimes ?

Being able to eat something you don't like much is a useful life skill. We might not always eat at the same time but we mostly eat the sane food(s) as each other.

Oh we don't eat tea, we eat dinner or supper.

DC are 14 & 17. This week (fairly typical)
Tonight - Roast (I cook)
Mon- Chilli (Done in the oven with roast)
Tuesday - Pasta pesto with cream and mushrooms ( whoever finishes work 1st)
Weds - Stir fry (DS cooks)
Thurs - French onion soup (DH cook)
Fri - Pizza (DH makes)

Oh wow, this thread js amazing! DH and I have ALWAYS eaten separate meals - we have completely different food tastes (his favourite foods are my least favourites and vice versa, I eat a mostly pescatarian diet and he loves meat) so we only eat the same meal about once a fortnight. People always react as if I’ve told them we kill puppies for coats. It’s not that weird!

We both decided a long time ago that we’re not children, so why would we want to eat food for dinner we didn’t like just because someone else was eating it? I agree that some of our friends who eat the same dinner together seem to have lots of rows and resentment about it. It works very well for us - we do try and make sure we cook and eat at the same time which is quite easy for the type of things we cook. I really wouldn’t do it any other way, and it also means when we do eat the same meal it feels nice and different!

We eat together 6/7. It just seems easier and convenient. I meal plan and do most if the cooking. DH and DC clean and put away.
It is important to be as when I was a teenager we all did our own thing and i ate any old crap out the freezer. Microwaved burgers/pizza/ ready meals. It was pretty crap.
If I do a big pasta dish and someone wants theres later, that's fine, we're not regimental. Just seems easier all at once.

Baffled by all the comments about food waste and banging into each other in the kitchen - what kind of extravagant meals is everyone making that involve so many pans and processes every week night?!

A standard evening meal for us would be - salmon salad for me, DH eating a spaghetti bolognaise that he then freezes half of, and eats twice more that week. Really easy to navigate round each other, no waste and no more expensive than it would be if we were both eating it. In fact, we both get to eat what we want more often because buying salmon for 2 would be much more expensive than just for me!

OH and I don't tend to eat with the kids.. apart from when we have a roast dinner.

Few reasons:

I don't want to eat at 6 pm. Too early for me but they want to eat by then.

I don't actually really enjoy eating with my kids! Preparing for flaming, but my kids are noisy and messy at the table, despite years of trying to encourage them to eat nicely.

Call me selfish but I like eating in peace a bit later on in the evening. We usually don't eat until after they have gone to bed.

Also DS is super fussy and will only eat a small selection of food. It woukd be hugely restrictive for DD and us if we all had to wat the same thing every day.

I know people think all sitting round the table together is important etc, but it just doesn't work for us. I'm sure when they are a bit older it will be more common for us to eat at the same time ( they're 10 and 8)

We always eat supper and breakfast together, always have. It's our time to chat and catch up.

Why do you think people who eat together row about food? Sounds odd. Is that how you grew up?

It sounds as though some of those who set great store on eating together think that those of us who don't are missing out on close, family time. We're not, we just get it in different ways.

@Meowenstein

Why do you think people who eat together row about food? Sounds odd. Is that how you grew up?

So I’ve spoken to a couple of friends (interestingly all women…) who complain about how they have to make food they don’t like, or talk about how they get upset when they come home from work and have to cook and their husbands/kids complain about what they’re having. I also have one friend who regularly rows with her DH because whenever she asks him to sort out supper for that evening, always orders a take away. It’s this kind of thing that me and DH avoid. I’m sure not every family has these issues but I do know a lot that do.

When I was growing up my mum was a vegetarian who always cooked a vegetarian meal for herself and me and a meat meal for my Dad, which is why it’s so normal for me for family to eat different things. We always ate together (like me and DH now), but eating different foods doesn’t impact on that.

We almost always eat together. Meals are generally the same for us all (in veggie and the others aren't) but with adaptions e'g chips instead of rice, me eating veg sausages instead of normal.

Even when my brothers and I were teens / younger adults (we were all 22-25 when we left home) the expectation was that if we were home, we would join the family for a meal at the table. We didn't begrudge it, we all enjoyed it and some of my best memories are from dinner times