Ranch dressing is an abomination and is not allowed in my house.
Any booze left in my fridge after the party becomes my property. I may serve it to you again on a subsequent visit, but it stopped being yours the minute you stepped off my front porch.
My mother has cheese rules, but my sister and I cannot figure them out. She says she hates cheese, all cheese in any form. But she likes pizza. And lasagna. And grilled cheese samiches. But if she sees you add cheese to the spaghetti sauce (I got busted once), she will not eat it. But she’ll eat the pizza. I think what’s going on is she doesn’t like the smell of real cheese. Any pasteurized processed cheese-food like product that melts really well (Velveeta for example) will totally work for her.
If you don’t like something, you don’t have to eat it. But you do have to try it to figure out if you like it or not.
If I’m making meat, the sides are veggies and fruits - one of each is mandatory. If I can’t find any or don’t have time to cook some, then I break out the bread. Bread might also be served once the veggies and fruits are gone. I’m not on a low-carb diet or anything, but if given a chance, my son will eat bread and only bread for every meal.
Beverage options at home are usually limited to milk and water for the kids with the occasional glass of juice.
Edited to add: I no longer purchase salad dressings unless a friend has me over for dinner and asks me to bring the salad. I’ve made my own for so long that the bottled versions taste fake.
My husband’s house rule is No Fake Foods. This means no margarine, no fake sugars, no velveeta, no “low fat” versions of real food. The vegetable shorting is hidden in the back of the cupboard.
In fact, I have several rules regarding ketchup. It is for french fries, hot dogs (if you must) and hamburgers. It shall not be added to any other item. (Inclusion in things like meatloaf where it is a necessary ingredient, however, is different.)
I swear that my kids would dowse everything in ketchup if they had the chance. I don’t get it. Even a tiny bit of it makes everything taste like only ketchup. (It’s also mostly sugar.)
When I was growing up, every meal had a veggie side (or two) and a cold side. The cold side usually was cottage cheese, as my Mom thought you could never have too much calcium. The other go-to was applesauce.
Yes, ketchup is allowed on the meatloaf, in the meatloaf, even alongside the meatloaf. However, TheKid doesn’t like it, so I usually either leave it off, or I’ll split the mixture and make one plain, one sauced.
In the butter vs magrarine war: Margarine is used when making Rice Krispie bars. That’s it.
My rules turned out to be - as long as the kid is eating fairly balanced, don’t try to be controlling over when, where, or how something is eaten. None of that clean your plate crap I faced as a child. But no wasting food either. No forcing the eating of something that “build’s character”. I swear, my mother forced me to eat liver out of sheer cruelty, with such a frequency did it grace our dinner table.
Ketchup on meatloaf is only acceptable if it’s used in the glaze on the meatloaf. Only other acceptable slatherin’s for meatloaf is brown, sawmill, and (in a pinch) red-eye gravy. But I prefer my meatloaf naked, and then I dip or scoop a piece into the mashed potatoes for each bite.
The only rule in my kitchen is that nobody cooks in it but me. Being a chef, I work clean and I dont let equipment and tools sit around dirty. My wife and 3 daughters are wonderful people, but slobs.
I love to cook more than any other activity in the world, so if someone is hungry, I’m more than willing to bang out a quick meal or snack at any time of the day or night.
My kitchen rule is the same as Markxxx’s mother’s rule. I cook what I cook. You either eat it or wait for the next meal even if the next meal is breakfast.
Having picky children, I also have a corollary rule: you can ask me as many times as you want what I’m making for dinner. I’m not telling you. I really don’t want to hear about how much you hate dinner for 15 minutes leading up to the meal and then when we sit down to eat. What difference does it make what I"m making? Knowing ahead of time doesn’t change anything except how annoyed Mom is by the time the meal is over with.
I’d like to add these to my list. My mom hovers over my son when she visits and tells him what to eat next. I usually chase her away from the table when it starts. He likes the company when he’s eating, but as long as what’s on his plate is reasonably healthy most of the time, I don’t care how much of it he eats and when.
Another rule: whenever possible, eat as a family. My mom was brought up in the school where kids ate first, then were gotten out of the way so adults could eat “grown up” food in grown up company. I was raised that way and broke out of it as soon as our son was on table food. I wish I’d done so earlier. My husband and I eat separate from the kids when I just haven’t had time to cook anything (unfortunately, that’s been frequently this week) or when we really need some time alone together, but I like having meals that involve the kids for practical purposes - less cleaning and I get to go to bed earlier - and because I like to talk to my kids and my husband without other stuff going on.
When we were kids, the only beverages we were allowed with meals were milk and water. It was the rule. There was one exception. Dad had a phobia about having milk with seafood. He wouldn’t abide it, and thought it would sour in the stomach. I loved seafood as a result since it was the only time I was allowed a soda with dinner.
My mother really only had two steadfast rules in my house when I was growing up. One was you ate what was cooked or you went hungry until the next day. Two was everyone ate at the same time, at the table and the TV was off for the duration of the meal. Usually the TV stayed off the rest of the evening and we all stayed at the table long after dinner was over just because of all the talking and laughing. Those were some of the best times of my life.
