How do your eating habits differ from those of your parents

[entertainme]

My Mom is an excellent cook and is more likely to be making all their meals from scratch. Me? I cook real food a few times to most nights a week depending on schedule.

We both cook more carb conscious these days.

P.S. I'm going to jtr's for dinner though. I don't get spaghetti these days and it sounds delicious. I'll just have to go for a walk afterwards.

[Blarg]

My folks tried to always have a hot meal for us, and it was never frozen or fast food. Fast food was very rare. However, not all of it was home-made either. Like every kid, I loved spaghetti, but all we did was cook meatballs in bottled sauces. We often had garlic bread on the side, which I still love. But now I am a little more inventive with a red sauce, flavoring it myself. The folks only used ground beef in it, and often mushrooms, but I'll throw in different kinds of sausages too. And I'll use other noodles than spaghetti noodles too. I usually add lots of garlic and onions, and often but not always use paste.

Their general emphasis, though, was that every meal had to have vegetables, a starch, and meat. And we also ate plenty of fruit. It was a basically healthy emphasis, although my dad was extremely old school, in that he would periodically fly into a rage if you cut some fat off a piece of meat and took even the tiniest bit of meat with it. He insisted that eating fat was good for you, and also that we should enjoy it. He was wrong on the first count, of course, and his cholesterol was always sky-high. And he could really do nothing regarding the second, except threaten and rage. He sometimes turned the table into a battle-zone that made us reluctant even to sit down. We would always try to arrive last at the table so the meal would begin with him picking on someone else.

Now, I eat a lot more salads. I really love them, so it's not just to be healthy, though healthy matters. My grandparents had too many heart attacks, and I'm in no hurry to have one. And I eat a lot more chicken. My parents usually pan-friend and sometimes deep-fried chicken, and I either put it on a rotisserie or bake it. My way is better.

They also did roasts. Pork roasts, pot roasts. And the occasional corned beef and cabbage. I don't do any red meat roasts at all. They pretty much never did chili, and I rarely do, but when I do, it's usually pretty darn good.

While we would go on occasional binge weeks for dessert, it remained something special, so there was no refusing to eat your meal so you'd have space to gorge on dessert.

[KotOD]

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My parents would go the tomato sauce and tomato paste route. There'd be ground beef added. We always had a bay leaf or two in the sauce which would simmer for hours. The spaghetti came out of a five pound box. I can't remember the brand, but can still picture the box. The strands were as brittle as the ego on a failed Russian ballerina. It was always the same brand and "al dente" was not in the consideration. We always had garlic bread.

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Your parents were likely not exposed to the varieties of foods that you are, nor were they able to acquire the vast amount of cheap ingredients that you can get your hands on. This makes a huge difference when it comes to food prep.

My mom cooked the recipes of her mother and aunts for my entire life. She used what was available when she was younger and as options changed, she didn't really have experience in cooking new things and was comfortable in the things that she makes.

I recently bought my parent's house and they are moving into a condo. They however don't close for four weeks and I closed on my townhouse already, so my wife and kid and I are living together with my parents for the next month. Since I moved in, I've been cooking every night and they are amazed at the variety of foods I've made them and they love them all. They love trying new foods, but just never had the opportunities to make them for themselves.

However, it does run both ways. Many of the complicated home-style, old-country recipes that were time consuming are too much for me to take on for dinner.

[phage]

My parents both love fish however I can't stand eating any cooked fish whatsoever. Actually, cooked salmon makes me physically ill. Both parents love to cook and now that they are both retired do lots of cooking that requires extra time. Plus the combination of Swedish and West Indian backgrounds makes for a greater variety of meals. I tend to eat easily prepared foods during the week and go for the more complicated stuff on the weekends.

My parents also impressed upon me the need to enjoy meals (esp. dinner). We ate together every night. The meals were relaxed and involved actual conversations. Now dinners tend to be much quicker since my wife and I tend to work rather late...

[katyseagull]

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Plus the combination of Swedish and West Indian backgrounds makes for a greater variety of meals.

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oh cool! This sounds really interesting to me. Give us some examples of their favorite meals. Like how would they prepare the fish and what would they typically serve with it?

[Blarg]

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My parents both love fish however I can't stand eating any cooked fish whatsoever. Actually, cooked salmon makes me physically ill. Both parents love to cook and now that they are both retired do lots of cooking that requires extra time. Plus the combination of Swedish and West Indian backgrounds makes for a greater variety of meals. I tend to eat easily prepared foods during the week and go for the more complicated stuff on the weekends.

My parents also impressed upon me the need to enjoy meals (esp. dinner). We ate together every night. The meals were relaxed and involved actual conversations. Now dinners tend to be much quicker since my wife and I tend to work rather late...

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Eating together is highly prized by Indians, I understand. Like Katy, I'm curious what kind of dishes you guys might come up with. Whenever I think of Nordic food, I always think heavy and plain, often doughy. And salted fish. It's hard to picture anything light or with bright flavors.

[phage]

Many of the Swedish dishes involve fish...Pickled and or salted-I think my mum favorite is any of a variety of Pickled herring. My dad sort of makes his curries up on the fly. However they are HOT. Not oooh this is a bit spicy/it has a bit of a kick-but all out sweating your ass off HOT.
My favorites really are the various curries and indian breads (Chipati/roti/paratha-and the fry bake (so awesome) my aunt from Trinidad would make). The Swedish foods I love the most were the wide variety of foods my mother would prepare for Christmas (MEATS!!!!! and of course saffron bread and ginger cookies)
I have to say growing up we spent a lot of time in the kitchen. My brother is now a chef and I can't make a meal with him without finishing off a bottle of port.

There are Swedish foods with bright flavours. They use lots of wonderful spices and other than wintery meals things can be quite delicate

[jfk]

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Your parents were likely not exposed to the varieties of foods that you are, nor were they able to acquire the vast amount of cheap ingredients that you can get your hands on. This makes a huge difference when it comes to food prep.

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This is true, though it doesn't entirely explain away the eating differences.

While we may be able to get raspberries or asparagus shipped from Chile out of season, something not possible thirty years ago, my parents had tomatoes growing in the backyard, though it never would've dawned on them to use them in their sauces. They could've easily grown the basil or oregano in the back yard, but again, it wasn't something they did.

There was an article in Wine Spectator some years ago discussing this phenomenon in restaurant meals. Thirty or forty years ago a chef would be expected to pump out old standards, typically French standards, even though that might mean going to canned foods to prepare the dish. Certain chefs, like Alice Waters, eventually saw the folly in this and decided that serving local, fresh ingredients would make for better overall meals than sticking with formulas which didn't always fit the available ingredients.

Getting back to the spaghetti meal comparison, we went through a whole sourdough baguette and the better part of a batard. To my parents they would've turned that into garlic bread because they always served garlic bread with spaghetti. To my way of thinking the fresh loaves themselves are a better companion. The garlic bread would be an option for me a couple of days later when a little life went out of the bread.

[Blarg]

I'm surprised to see some people not grooving on the garlic bread as much as I do. I'm crazy about garlic bread, and spaghetti is a perfect food to have a garlic taste with, so the garlic bread is actually one of my favorite things about having spaghetti, actually. I'm always elated when there's good garlic bread and wish there were more.

[KotOD]

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Your parents were likely not exposed to the varieties of foods that you are, nor were they able to acquire the vast amount of cheap ingredients that you can get your hands on. This makes a huge difference when it comes to food prep.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, though it doesn't entirely explain away the eating differences.

While we may be able to get raspberries or asparagus shipped from Chile out of season, something not possible thirty years ago, my parents had tomatoes growing in the backyard, though it never would've dawned on them to use them in their sauces. They could've easily grown the basil or oregano in the back yard, but again, it wasn't something they did

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Hmmm, my parents and grandparents did both.