What is your family’s dining ritual?

I thought this would be an interesting topic to share this week – what is your family dining ritual?

Family rituals are things that you do with your family members only, and may not be necessarily practised in other families. Examples are: a special song that your family would sing, how you dunk your biscuits in your coffee, home movie sessions every beginning of the month etc.

Or there are rituals that are handed down through generations. These can be specific cookies, or cakes that your family would like every year or on special occasions, or family gatherings at your place on a specific time of the year etc.

So what about your dining rituals?

What do you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Do you snack in between meals? Do you eat together as a family?

Allow me to share mine – and as with all family rituals, it all starts from a young age!

Breakfast – no breakfast – no way out!

As the saying goes, breakfast is the most important meal of the day – so there was no way we could leave the house without breakfast.

So what do you have for breakfast? I grew up with half boiled eggs (not my favourite), bread and kaya, but mostly hot food and leftovers.

Our weekend rituals – on Saturdays, we would normally have our extra school activities, so we would still eat from home and headed out to the school. As for Sundays, it was our grocery shopping day. I would normally follow my mum or my grandma to the market, and hit the “kopitiam” to curb our hawker food cravings, like hokkien mee, tok tok mee etc.

Breakfast

So in Australia – two rituals still hold true for me – (1) No breakfast – no way out –  (2) I still prefer hot meals in the morning.

Sometimes my son, who normally would be the one running late for the bus, but knew that I would be hopping mad if they did not have their breakfast before heading off. So he would appease me with a quick bite of toast or a hot drink before dashing off.

However, my daughter on the other hand would sacrifice her sleep for a hot meal. The hot meal would most probably be leftovers.

Lunch – packed lunch

We would sometimes pack sandwiches/leftovers for lunch, or mostly we would purchase some food from our school canteen. Mostly at least my family would know what we were eating, and secondly it was to help us save some money by not eating out too often.

Thus in Australia – I would still prefer my children to pack their lunches for school. At least I know what they will be eating, and secondly it is more cost effective by taking your own lunch.

Dinner time – family eat together

My grandmother was strict with her dinner ritual – dinner time was a time where everyone sat down and ate together. Naturally, I followed this ritual at my own home in Australia, where we would make dinner time a family time, at least a few nights a week.

What is your dining ritual? Did you learn it from your childhood or from a new culture in your new country? I would love to hear about your experiences with your family dining rituals. Share them below or via the facebook.