Spouse and I stick to a definite eating plan. We eat breakfast separately within a half hour of awakening. Same for lunch, about noon or 1 P.M., unless we go out for lunch together or a picnic at about 1 P.M.

Dinner is eaten together at approx. 6 P.M. If DH is not going to be home until 7, I'll go ahead and eat and then make up a platter that he can pop in the microwave to heat when he arrives.

We eat no sweets or snacks during the day but every night at 8 P.M., we have a cup of tea and some type of sweet treat.

Although the exact meal times may change according to our activities, we try to go with the three full meals and tea time every day.

Random times, but mostly between 6 pm and 8 pm.

Another random, but generally between 6:30 and 8:30.
The time doesn't matter, I cook, serve dad when I want, and dh eats when he wants. I eat when I am hungry.
I think the communal family dinner time only applies to families with kids and foodies who want fresh, hot food.

We have no time restrictions but I do like to serve dinner between 6:30 and 7 PM, I really don't like eating too close to bed time and for me that is 10 PM or so....

Breakfast is always when "himself" get his @$$ out of bed...usually closer to 9 AM than my up time of 7AM!!! However I'm very happy with my two cups of tea and my quiet time before having to be "social"

Different strokes for different folks..... We're a prime example of the Early Bird Special folks, and we're also those weird people who schedule everything - we even schedule doing nothing. Our "ditch" runs very deep (LOL)!

M-F I get up between 3:00-3:15 a.m., hubby 4:00-4:15 a.m. Exercise.

Breakfast: around 5:30 a.m.

Lunch: I'll eat between 10:30 to 11:00 a.m. and hubby takes his lunch to work and eats as time allows.

Dinner (we call it supper, a dinner is a formal banquet around here): 5:30 p.m.

Sat./Sun.:
Hubby sleeps in until 6:00 a.m. and I get up by 3:30.
Breakfast: 6:30 a.m.
Lunch: 11:00 a.m.
Dinner: 4:30-5:00

We don't eat after 7:00 p.m. and go to bed at 9:00 p.m.

-Grainlady

We also eat an early dinner..Usually around 5PM. We often go out for dinner and we love those early specials! If we eat later it interferes with our sleeping so early is best for us. It's me, my DD and DH!
Joann

I pick up my kids around 6, they're starving and find something to ruin their appetite for dinner because they know 7:30 is about the earliest they can hope for in this house. More likely 8:00 or 8:30, after which it's pretty much straight to showers and bed. I know this schedule isn't good but try as I may I can't seem to break it.

I value eating together because it's how I grew up. My wife grew up in a house where dinner was prepared early and everyone just grabbed it when they wanted. I hate that with a passion. Kids or not, meal time should be family time in my book.

Foas, Dh, Dad and I eat breakfast together on weekends :-)

Growing up in Texas we also called the evening meal "supper", but I understand that that is mainly an English tradition, and my family is anything but English. Dinner was at noon on Sunday. Anyway, we always had supper at 6:00 PM on week days as the main meal, and the evening meal on Sunday was light. We would often have picnics on Saturdays, or at least eat outside. I seem to remember having dinner at noon during the week in the summer, followed by a siesta. We pretty much always ate together as a family for at least one meal a day, even though that was usually in the eat-in kitchen, which was large enough for a dining table seating six in the middle of the room. Sunday dinner was the only meal in the dining room.

Lars

Here is a link that might be useful: Dinnertime from History Magazine

i agree FOAS...sharing meals together is sacred in this house. Even to this day my kids know that dinner time is family time...and don't mess with that.

I aim for 6:30 but sometimes it is 7 or a bit later. Depends on what and when I start prep. And meals are always eaten together, Dad and I at a set table. Breakfast and lunch are a grab your own deal.

A former neighbor with 3 kids would cook, plop it on the table and every one would eat when ever. When the two boys were teens, she even told us she had no idea what and when they ate. There were no family dinners unless she had to host the holiday meal. I don't think she ever realized that the kids showed up at my house several times a week for meals.

When I lived alone, I always ate when I got home from work, which meant I prepared dinner and ate between 6 and 630.

With the family living here now, we eat, all five of us together, between 530 and 6P now. Out to play after dinner, and a brisk walk for me. I love the late days in spring and summer. My DD is turning into a wonderful cook, too.

I can't eat after 730, it sits in my stomach all night and I feel like cr*p.

I'm firmly in favor of family meals, and we eat as many as we can together, at the kitchen table. Breakfast most mornings , and lunch too, as often as possible, almost always dinner, 7 days a week.

I had that sacred thing growing up too, 6pm every night, weekends a little less formal. I deeply appreciate the bond and security it produced but I also vowed when I grew up, I would eat when I felt like it and eat what I wanted. And I do!

No breakfast.

Business lunches 70% of the time, sometimes I skip lunch due to meeting schedules.

Big dinner at exactly 6:30 so I can watch the news.

Another big snack (almost like another dinner) just before I go to bed(12:00, 1:00 a.m.).

dcarch

Dinner is any time between 6:30 and 8:00 around here. Whether a work day or not.

~Ann

It seems like no matter how early I plan to have dinner, something happens and we eat around 8. When I worked at home, we had our main meal in the early afternoon and a light meal or snack later. Now I never know what time I'll get home, and unless I cook for the week on Sunday or we have leftovers, we graze during the week.

Glad to have leftover lasagne tonight...was fighting computers all day and breakfast/lunch was a handful of wheat thins and an iced latte. Typical day...sighhhhh....

Here the evening meal is also called supper, dinner is the midday meal, now called lunch.

Elery and I both grew up with family meals, everyone sat down together and ate together, no television, radio, etc. If I watched the news during a meal, I'd probably get sick.

Elery spent a lot of years working a split shift but his ideal time to wake up is 5 am, sometimes before. He'll get up, make coffee, have breakfast. I get up closer to 7:30 or 8 am, and don't want to eat right away. If I do have breakfast, dinner/lunch tends to get skipped, we generally have two meals a day and a snack at night.

Because Elery's work schedule had him off work at 3 pm, he wants to eat by 5 pm. That works OK for me now, although when the girls were in school and I worked full time, I didn't get out of work until 5 pm and dinner was 6:30 or 7 usually.

As a general guideline we have breakfast by 9 am, no lunch, supper at about 5 and a snack for Elery and Cooper at 9 pm sharp, Cooper can tell time, I swear. Elery is asleep by 10 pm and I stay up until 1 or 2 am sometimes, so neither of us get as much sleep as we probably would if we had more regular schedules.

Annie

This post was edited by annie1992 on Tue, Jun 4, 13 at 22:43

I like to have my main meal at lunchtime if I'm out and about, and then just a small nibble like cheese and crackers (and cheap red wine) for dinner, ideally around 6:30 or 7. However my Sheltie pup will sit in front of me and stare beginning at 6, a message I can't misinterpret. So it just depends on how long I can hold out
without feeling guilty!

We are early birds. Started when the boys were little and I was a stay at home mom. They were up at the crack of dawn, ate breakfast early, lunch early, and then dinner around 5:00. Now that they are older, it's just more of a habit. They are 11 and 15 and eat pretty much round the clock. We sit down together for dinner still, at least most nights.

Tracey

Grainlady, why do you get up at 3:30 in the morning? That is the middle of the night in my book.

Anyway, I eat breakfast as soon as I stumble down the stairs. Cereal and coffee. I make life exciting by switching cereals from time to time. I've been on a raisin bran kick lately, although this morning I had some fresh local strawberries, so I put them on Cheerios.

Lunch is usually a sandwich grabbed at 12:30.

Dinner is around 7:00, sometimes earlier. Mostly whenever my stomach starts to grumble.

I am not even going to admit how much I pick between meals. It's a real downfall for me. I wish I could be disciplined like Ruthanna. I saw her recently and her eating habits must be healthy, because she looks great.

I grew up eating meals with the family every night. I continued that as much as possible with my family. Unfortunately the XH wasn;t home at dinnertime much (long commute and gawd knows what else), so it was me and two little boys who squabbled through the entire meal. Sometimes I caved and let them eat in front of the tv to get some peace and quiet.

Grainlady's time to get up is my normal time to go to bed. Up at 630. Supper is variable times normally before 800 usually driven by the question You hungry?

When all is said and done, we all have 24-hours in the day to utilize whether we're a "lark" and rise early, or a "night owl" and stay up late - so it all comes out in the wash no matter which end of the day we use.

I've been an early riser all my life and I function best on 6-hours of sleep. My alarm clock has gone off 2 times (that I can remember) in the last 20 years. I always wake up long before the alarm is set to go off.

-Grainlady

Usually between 7-8pm. On the rare occaision a little later.

random times for us, too. In summer months it's not unusual for us to sit down to dinner at 8:30 or 9 pm. Winter months tend to be earlier, we're not as busy outside. If we're eating together, it's at the table, no tv. I told DH years ago that if wanted to watch tv while he ate, he could go get a burger at McDonalds.

Breakfast & lunch we may eat together or apart, depends on what's going on around the house. More often on weekends we eat breakfast alone then maybe lunch together, he gets up earlier than I usually. I try to make sure there's something he can fix himself easily, he likes leftover dinner for breakfast often, and I figure that's better than fast-food (assuming dinner was wholesome).

posted by pkramer-'A former neighbor with 3 kids would cook, plop it on the table and every one would eat when ever.' That's funny, I grew up with a big pot of goulash or spagetti bubbling on the back of the stove & people just took a bowl as they came & went. I never liked those foods, they always tasted like bad cafeteria food to me.

Dh and I have slightly different work schedules where twice a week 1 of us does not get home until 10pm. Those nights whoever is working usually eats at work and the other leftovers or cooks something for themselves. On the other nights if I can start dinner before driving my mother home from her job at 4:15 (she can't drive due to medical issues) we eat at 6ish. If i have not started anything it generally becomes 7:30-8:00 before dinner is ready. Generally I don't eat breakfast at home just coffee and DH usually has oatmeal or an english muffin. On Sundays we sometimes cook a huge breakfast or if we don't, we go out for lunch and skip the breakfast altogether. Saturdays we work together all day 8am to 8pm and eat at work.