family dinner - mc donalds

i have a question.  my mom never bought us mc donalds for dinner - i tryed it with freinds as my sister did. i remember 1 time my brother and i had mc donalds for dinner with our family when we were growing up my sister who is younger doesnt remember ever having it at home.  i hate to say i liked it but i did.  being older i do not eat it because i know it is bad for me.  and if i get the fries it is very infrequent - well over a year since i have had them.

anyways i thought t was/is admireable that we werent fed fast food at home.  my sister is a teacher and she told me her students have a "mc donalds night" once a week!!  i see that as excessive and odd for a family to eat mc donalds as dinner.  do other people do this??  maybe not as this is a calorie counting site.  i don't have kids so i don't know and my brothers kids usually eat it for a quick lunch not for dinner with the family.  oddly enough my mom has gotton them it once or twice when watching them.

When I was younger, my mom cooked dinner every night except Friday, which was pizza night.  We always ate at the table together except for pizza night, when we usually sat in the living room together and watched TGIF.  We had McDonald's maybe once or twice a month, but never for dinner.  Since I moved to college, my family's sense of "family dinners" as all but disappeared.  My mom buys my 16 year old brothers McDonald's several times a week.  She will sometimes even stop there on the way to school to buy them breakfast.  They go through the drive-thru all the time, but they never sit down at the table and eat it together.  The closest thing they have to a "family dinner" anymore is if they're all eating it in the car together. 

My family had mostly home cooked family dinners growing up... take out was just to give mom and dad a break from cooking. I know some families that do take out almost every night of the week, though. Fast food as well. I find it very strange. I don't view McDonalds as a "restaurant"..just a grab n go thing that you get when there is nothing else-- or as a treat, etc. But many families these days view take out food as the "default".

We did pizza night once a week because my mom worked part time, and the day that she worked all day my brother and I would have CCD, so there would be no time to cook and eat dinner. That was, if I recall correctly, Monday night. Then we would go out I would estimate every other Friday night. The rest of the nights my mom cooked. :-) Fast food like McDonald's was a thing we got maybe once a month instead of pizza.

thanks for answering you guys.

pizza i had usually on friday nights also growing up (or sometimes subs).  sat. night was grilled burgers or hotdogs. and pasta with tomatoe sauce was sunday nights.  it was infrequent that we went out for dinner that was mainly on family vacations. so my mom cooked every night but once a week.

now that i think about it we did get chick fil a (i don't even know if they still have that place) for lunch sometimes when at the mall so i wasn't totally deprived from fast food - but it was infrequent and a treat, my mom just isn't a fan of mc donalds or fast food.  i suppose she as do i like sugar more then fried.

We rarely had fast food growing up.  My mum doesn't like McDonalds et al., so pretty much the only time I had it was on school trips.  We went out to dinner at an actual restaurant maybe six times a year (four birthdays and maybe twice more as treats).  The whole idea of raising a family on fast food is just odd to me, but I know it does happen.

Growing up as I did in the North (UK) in the 1970's/80's there was an unspoken 'rule' that Friday night was a 'chippy tea'   To translate if anyone is unfamiliar.... the 'chippy' is the fish and chip shop!  

Our family, never being too flush with the cash, would sometimes go with the masses and queue up for 2 large cod and 2 x portions of chips to be brought home and shared between the four of us.   It was excellent.  Proper battered cod and real chunky-cut chips, fluffy on the inside and just crisp on the outside.  Mushy peas on the side.   Plenty of salt & vinegar, tomato ketchup, great teetering plate of bread and butter......  I defy anyone to call that junk food, I really do. 

I never had fast food or soda as a kid.  Mum was totally against them.  i still ended up fat though. lol.

when i was younger we used to get mcdonalds on friday nights and watch tgif! wow the memories!!! then that eventually turned into pizza night when mcd's started getting too pricey... yeah no wonder i was a chubby kid!

While I blame teenage fatness on fast food, what really got me as a kid was not so much the occasional happy meal but the lack of motivation to go outside.

We only got fast food when we were out somewhere, but we hardly ever brought it home.  We did have pizza or chinese food some nights too, but probably less than once a week. 

When I was raising my boys we never went for dinner at McDonalds. It was only a quick lunch while out running errands or on  the way to a swim practice etc. Now that I am being more commited to my wieght and health I have stopped hitting the drivre thru when in a rush and shoving a burger in my mouth while driving. It has made efforts to improve by having salads I will grab and bring to the office for lunch. But if I do have to grab fast food I preffer Subway and make an effort to find one. The salads are very good and satisfing.

We have pizza friday, we eat frozen, make our own, or order out.

But with Mc Donalds for family dinners, RArely got it as a child and now my mom insist on taking my kids for happy meals every Sunday after church.

I just appreciate that they get what I never got..

I was in the same wagon as most of you. As a child we seldom went out to eat and when we did it was not for fast food. Meals were generally home cooked. As I got older fast food was incorporated a little more, high scool age, and more for lunch. I would cook dinner in high school on occassion. Today I still cook home meals for my family, although I will admit when I first started working we ate a little more fast food than I care to admit. But I have since gotten back into my home cooked meals.   

omg jane you had my mouth watering lol we did exactly the same mmmm i can almost taste it!! have you seen the price of fish and chips these days??

we dont have a mcdonalds in my town the nearest one is 20 miles away so not tempted phew!

i didn't get alot of pizza or fast-food as a kid, but my mom would often take me to convenient stores to buy bags of candy.. which is probably what contributed to my weight in the first place.

i do remember a few girls in my kindergarten class saying that friday night was "mcdonald's night" though.