NOW CLOSED:Bisto Aah Night want your top tips on how to enjoy family meal times - 2 x £100 hampers up for grabs, plus additional chance to win £1000

[rebeccamumsnet]

The Bisto Aah Night campaign is trying to help families put aside one evening a week for a proper home cooked meal together. A while back we asked Mumsnetters to volunteer
to try the Aah Night challenge and film their efforts and you can see their edited films and . Do take a minute (or 3.23 mins to be precise) to watch the films and then answer this question for a chance to win a £100 hamper of goodies.

If you click here you can also find out how your child could be one of 5 new Bisto Kids by telling Bisto how you'd make Aah Night happen in your family. Winners will be the new faces of the campaign and have the chance to win a £500 Red Letter Day experience plus every entrant gets the chance to win £1000 in cash. (closing date for this is NOV 29TH so hurry!!!)

Bisto would also love to hear your family's top tips on fitting in family meal time into a busy schedule- how often (if at all) do you manage it? Do you enjoy it? How can you make it easier, more enjoyable etc? Everyone who posts their tips on this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win another £100 hamper of goodies. Your tips may be used on Mumsnet and elsewhere. If you want to pledge your support for the campaign, sign up here. Thanks and good luck.

We already eat as a family most nights. e eat around 6:30pm when DH gets in from work. DD has a snack after school so that she is able to wait til them to eat.

As often as possible 8y DD is involved in cooking the meal and/or laying the table, and she helps with menu planning for the week too.

We try and eat at the table and that means we are away from the TV, so get to chat about anything and everything - a really special part of our day, and something me and DH miss when DD has one of her late after school activities on a Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tips for making it happen? Not sure - it is just part of our normal routine, not really a special effort. I think if you make it the norm it is easier.

Make it more enjoyable? Involve the children from the planning and cooking stages.

Try and have everything ready on the table so you don't have to keep getting up and down for extra drinks etc. It breaks the flow of the conversation if you are constantly having to leave the table.

We slow cook a lot and cut our veggies really chunky to stop them turning to mush. We also chuck half the veg in during the last half hour of cooking so you have some al dente and the rest more cooked.

If you have a busy schedule then family mealtimes require commitment. Better to agree that on X night every week wage-earners will be home by a time that allows the family to get to the table together and unrushed, than to struggle to fit it in and have to deal with frazzled children/cooks/home-comers. One peaceful, pleasurable family meal a week is vastly better that trying to fit it in too often and getting upset.

We have always sat together at the table - the children's high chairs were pushed up beside us when they were small. Now it's just part of what we do most evenings.

No TV, radio, ipods, etc. Once they were old enough and could understand we explained that it was polite that no-one should leave the table until everyone had finished.

Depending on time available it is either a traditional cooked meal of meat or fish with potatoes or rice and veg. If time is really tight then it could be omelettes or pasta. If someone is unavoidably late then they eat their meal in the lounge with the rest of the family so we can chat.

Top tip: get three stones, and draw a pic on each of them as follows: .

Then you pass the stones round the table and everyone has to talk about their day, describing something that made them happy/ sad/ laugh (holding the corresponding stones). The point of the stones is to give a bit more focus, something tangible for people who need/ prefer that.

Don't sweat the small stuff. Grated cheese or peas dropped on the floor are easier to sweep up when dried anyway
Try "you mustn't eat that bit. No don't touch that bit. Can't even move it with your fork. No don't put in your mouth!" with fussy eaters, works 50% of the time with my DC's!

Dish up the meals and don't discuss them anymore. Chat about things that have happened through the day etc. However tempting try not to constantly say 'eat your meal' 'eat your beg' 'eat your meal' etc! They will eat if they are hungry, never allow pudding though unless all meal

I want to be Vikki's best friend. Seven children and she has managed to find brilliant names for them all! Respect.

Cook the meals together! It's very easy (easier than you may think) and they're more likely to eat it if they cooked it.

Get a blackboard/bit of posh slate on the wall, and get your Dcs to write down tonight's menu as poshly as they can, trying to make it sound as tasty as possible.

We have breakfast together and dinner together most days. We have jobs that allow it. But I can't be doing with worrying about the details.

I find the ideological message of the Bisto campaign a bit offensive actually. What is a 'proper home cooked meal' exactly? One with artificial monosodiumglutamate and salt-filled gravy-product? Puhleese.

And the notion of an 'aah night'! Do you know what? I REALLY don't appreciate a multinational brand telling me how to organise my family life.

Bah humbug.

It's food: eat it how you bloody well like.

make sure children can reach the table properly and see their food while sat down. High Chair, booster seat, stool, special chair, what ever.Helps keep bums on seats and food on plates.

My top tips:

Make sure you have a repertoire of "family favourite" meals you can cook that suit the whole family.

Make sure everyone sits down, and stays sitting til everyone has finished.

Get the dcs involved in cooking/table laying/clearing as soon as possible, so it's "their" meal too.

Top tips for a happy family meal:

Eat separately at different times.

Preferably in different rooms- different houses even better.

Burn washing up.

The end.

I mentioned this thread to dh and he said:

A happy family meal? Roast dinner, roast potatoes, roast parsnips and carrots, some greens, and home-made gravy.

(Though he's right - it's just about the only meal which all our dc demolish with gusto and without the least little bit of fuss.. Plus it's relatively easy to prepare.)

I got fed up with constant battles with the stepchildren about what food they would and wouldntit. It was soul destroying.

We have recently started a rule that once a week one of the children chooses on a saturday a meal for the week ahead. Everyone has to try the choice!

Its working so far!

Some good tips on here. Glad your recent rule is working onadietcokebreak

Only cook one meal - not different meals for different people - and make it a healthy one!

Let your kids choose at least one meal each per week when you plan the weeks menus.

Keep experimenting with new meals - don't get stuck in a rut!

Use a slow cooker and/or bulk cook and freeze so that you have your own "convenience foods" without having to get them pre-made.

A TV dinner once a week or once a fortnight is fun but I would find it quite depressing to eat like this every day tbh.

I'm amazed so many people get back from work so early!

We can only eat together on Sunday evening - so I cook a big roast, loads of roast potatoes, lots of gravy, normally butternut (ds's fave) and cabbage (dd's fave) and we all really enjoy it. Lots of laughing, lots of silliness, is great.

I'd love to know how you get your kids to communicate so well at the table - we do all the above - ie: eat together at the table, properly laid, home cooked meals, no TV/games consoles etc etc but trying to get more than two words out of my nine year old is almost impossible except for 'please can I get down?' . He is not interested in pudding so (if we let him) 'meal time' might only last five minutes; as it is it seems to be endless comments like 'please wait until we have all finished' etc etc. Trying to get him to talk about his day is a non-starter !

(We have always had meals together - so it is not a new thing we are trying to instigate).

We always eat at the dinner table, usually all 5 of us together, sometimes I'll give the kids something they love first though if we fancy Thai curry.
I like the whole sitting-down-as-a-family thing, although we aren't perfect so often occasionally there is some squabbling.

My tip is once in a while to let the children choose what's for dinner; I have 3 kids so I will let each of them choose over three nights. It works out really well, with them all being so enthusiastic about their dinner (even though I'll pile on loads of vegetables with the veggie burgers and chips).
It's good from my point of view too, because I get sick of deciding what to cook!

My tip is to get a big enough table to fit the whole family around. Always a good starting point, unfortunately my table only seats 6. There are 7 of us

We usually all manage to eat at the same time, anywhere from 5pm -6pm unless dp is working late.

As many others have said, definitely no TV on.

Make sure you have everything you might need on the table already ie drinks (& cloth to mop up inevitably spilt drinks), sauces, extra cutlery for the dc's to replace those dropped, thrown, accidently swallowed and don't worry if your kids don't eat all their dinner, they need surprisingly less than you might think!

My top tip is a slowcooker. Have recently gone from SAHM to WOHM and it is a godsend. I can come home to bolognese or meatballs, add in some fresh pasta and garlic bread and tea is on the table within 10 minutes of me getting home.Ditto curry and rice, stew and mash etc etc. The days I don't use it we are reduced to stuff on toast!
When DH is working I can keep his hot but I always eat with the girls, they lay the table and we have tablemats etc that they have drawn and I have laminated [saddo] so they know their own place at the table.

Slow roast. That way you don't have to worry about the meat at all.

Get dh to do the spuds, just make sure he knows what time they have to be ready, and give him a nudge when the preparation time is coming up.

Get dd involved in prepping other veg.

Make your own gravy; it's much nicer and everyone admires you likes it better if they see you vigorously stirring in flour and seasoning at the last minute while dh carves.