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"Clean your plate" club. I'm glad this has gone by the wayside. Overeating is such a huge problem because of poor food choices, sedentary lifestyles and the omission of deliberate exercise by so many, this "club" is definitely not prestigious.

"No dessert unless you finish your (meal)." Yeah. This was brilliant (what I wouldn't do for an eyeroll icon right about now). Stuff yourself with dinner so you can squeeze in dessert (which usually isn't fruit).

"If you won't eat all your dinner, you're going to bed!" Let's take this opportunity to negatively reinforce dinner, shall we?

"Cooking is something the help does. There is no enviable or valuable talent in knowing how to put food on the table." That's a quote from XH-2. That marriage was doomed. I'm happy to say I surround myself with people who appreciate my culinary efforts. I also take great pride in my ability to cook.

"I don't cook with salt." It's got to be one of the biggest disappointments to get ready to tuck into a great looking meal when the cook proudly declares his or her non-salt practice. Salt should be added in the cooking and if it's done correctly, there is no need for added salt at the table. We might not need Anne Burrell-sized handfuls of salt, but it's crucial in moderate amounts. OTOH...

"I salt everything before tasting it." Not only is it an insult to the cook, but it's got to be one of the most unhealthy practices ever. The Habitual Salter runs the risk of high blood pressure - and certainly numbs the palate, robbing enjoyment of more subtle flavors.

@LPC - the "need to serve" is huge with Italians but you can bet after preparing either a show-stopper holiday meal or any old dinner, I take my rightful place at the table. It was nice of you to at least attempt breaking that cycle with your grandma.

my ex was was on the cave men refered to earlier, if it wasnt put in front of him, he didnt eat it. When we met he bragged that he never cooked and didnt even own a pot or pan. He wasnt kidding either, there was litterally Nothing to cook with in his apt. He survived living off take out. The first time I cooked a big meal for him, he even asked where I had picked it up from. I took him in the kitchen and explained that through my magic ability I had transformed raw "disgusting" (his word not mine) ingredients into a feast, and that because of that he could even have seconds without a doggy bag entering the picture.

As I have mentioned before, I don't care how good it tastes, I only care how fast I can put it on the table is my MIL's favourite line. Truth be told, I had not been familiar with this attitude before I met her, which is probably why it puzzles/shocks/insults me so much. On a rare occasion she does "cook" something (I'm using the term loosely here), she employs another attitude that baffles me - Everybody can season their own food at the table, that's why there are salt and pepper shakers there. Eh, no, the existence of salt & pepper shakers does not mean you don't need to season the food when you cook.

She has an odd variation of the "clean plate" attitude as well - she often tries to dump something onto my plate from hers, claiming I'm going to throw it away otherwise. Pardon me? I don't remember ever suggesting that you use me as your personal dustbin.

Now, not that my own family has always been perfect:-). Growing up, I was occasionally a victim of You're not leaving the table until you finish your meal, mostly coming from my Gran (mind you, it wasn't you're not getting dessert). No, she didn't promote overeating - we were never served gigantic portions, and I have always been very thin (in fact, I suspect she was sincerely concerned that I was "underweight"). But it's still very wrong! I recall one breakfast that lasted until noon - no, I never finished it, and I think it was a breaking point for my Gran:-).

Luna, I think your comment on women as servers is really interesting. My mom and other female relatives also did this alot when I was younger. They do it less, but it's become ingrained because I find myself doing it sometimes with friends or feeling mildly appalled when my boyfriend holds dinner parties and just hunkers down to eat with the rest of us.

My mom commented just this weekend that her aunt Inez would wash all the pots and pans dirtied during meal prep before she would sit down to eat. I'm typically the last to sit down but wouldn't think of staying in the kitchen while my guests ate. I'd miss too much of the conversation!

My dad has come a long way in the kitchen since I was young so the "men don't cook" philosophy never stuck with him. He likes to experiement and frequently gives me feedback and suggestions on things I make- which I find hilarious since I only remember him being able to make scrambled eggs (they were damn good!) when I was little!

I think Chiff hit all the major ones. The "salt before you eat" trick burns my ass. TASTE IT! I freely admit that I probably don't add as much salt as I should when I cook but for the love of God at least try it before you reach for the salt shaker.

My Grandmother, a woman of true Victorian persuasion, insisted on "saving the X------ (fill in the blank) for the children. Thus we were treated to the cold broccoli, the gelled gravy and slithy bits of meat that she refused to eat. In fairness to my parents, we were allowed to dispose of much of this plenitude by slipping it to the dog, and we were spared the "clean plate" club because we could always say that grandma put the offending ort there. My father was of the persuasion that a man should not have to cook, but should have meals provided to him, hot and on time. However, when my mother had a stay in the hospital, it turned out that he was a decent cook, and perhaps even better than she was. It turned out that he had taken over the food preparation in his dorm in college because the food was so bad and turned it into something at least edible. One of the stranger quirks in this strangest of all marriages.

@mlo: Actually, I myself, on the rare occasions that I am the hostess, never eat with the rest. I am always int he ktichen, fixing things and then either I will eat in there while I prep, or eat later on when the dishes have been cleared. My mother and grandmother were like that, too. I never once remember my grandmother sitting down to eat with us.

In fact, I remember as a kid, refusing to eat Quiche because I was afraid it somehow would made me weak. I think it helped that I had an older brother who would torment me with things that weren't true.

Thanks to him, I also believed that if you pulled off a mole, you would drop dead. I had a big mole on the back of neck, just underneath my hairline, and I remember being scared every time I got a haircut, thinking the person would accidently slice off the mole.

Older brothers are quite often... evil.

@FFC, saying "real men don't eat quiche" is a cheesy way to end up with egg on your face.

And ... um ... that would be brown cows ... first, you get a really big blender ...

My father in law is famous for salting everything before he eats it, I just forgot to put out the salt last time he came for dinner, when he asked where the salt was ( before his plate was even in front of him) I advised him that I had already seasoned the food, and if he still needed some I would get it for him...He got the hint and the cycle is broken :)

@Traveller, is your custom of not eating at the table just when you have guests, or do you do this with family as well? Does it matter how many diners? I mean, if it's you and spouse and one other couple, do the three of them eat and you hang out in the kitchen, or is this for larger occasions only?

It's an interesting custom, and apparently not that uncommon.

My mother never, not once, ate with us at the table, and it was just my dad and me eating. Her sister (when we visited that house) would stay away from the table if it was an occasion (Thanksgiving dinner or something big like that, with a lot of guests) and my mother would stay in the kitchen with her. But if it was just a family dinner, my aunt would eat with the family.

At the big dinners, when the the two sisters were hanging out in the kitchen, the husbands and other guests would be urging us kids to get the women and have them come to the table. After all, it was all prepared and served and one of the men would be carving the turkey or ham at the table. And there were places set at the table for the 2 women. There was nothing to do in the kitchen that was critical at that point. Dessert was a cake or pie that was already done.

We kids would make several trips to the kitchen and the women would make excuses about how they were doing something, and the meal would get colder as we "couldn't" start without them. Eventually they stopped sending us to the kitchen to get the women and we would eat without them. It was all very weird and uncomfortable.

Oddly enough, at home, it was so usual that mom didn't eat with us that dad never said anything about it. That was just the way it was. And we lived in a small apartment, and ate in the kitchen, so it's not like mom was in another room where we couldn't see her. She was three feet away. We sat at the table and she basically stood at the kitchen counter near the sink and watched us eat and smoked cigarettes until we were done.

I am soooo thankful that my parents never did the "clean your plate" thing. I don't think it's that they were particularly smart, it may simply be that they had me quite late in life, and they didn't have the energy for long standoffs at the dinner table.

I think part of my mother's attitude about feeding me came when I was quite ill, and the one thing I wanted to eat was hot dogs. Not much else appealed to me. (I don't recall this occasion, but she used to tell this story a lot.) She was trying to get me to eat chicken soup and drink orange juice, but I kept asking for hot dogs, which she thought was a bad choice for a sick kid. She brought up her concerns to the doctor, and being a rather sensible man he told her that if that's what appealed to me while I was sick, she should let me eat it, and that I wouldn't starve or die of malnutrition if I didn't eat anything else for a few days. And that when I felt better, my appetite would no doubt come back.

I'm still alive, so I guess it worked. When I wasn't sick, I didn't actually get choices as to what I'd be eating, so it wasn't like there were hot dogs every day. What was served was all there was. But I could have as much or as little of what I wanted, and if I tried something and didn't like it, there was no big deal made about it. It ended up that I was willing to try pretty much anything, and it seems that I liked just about everything I tried.

I find the idea of women not sitting at the table interesting. My mother always sat with us, but I find myself reluctant to sit down with my guests when I have a large group of people in. I do it, but I then find myself driven to jump up and get things for folks, even when they are perfectly capable and comfortable (ie they live in this house!). I grew up in a clean your plate house and while I learned to deal with it and choke stuff that I did not care for down, my sister did not. She was (and still is) a stubborn girl, and "broke" my parents so to speak when she went through a spanking with my dad's belt (the worst punishment in our house - and this was the ONLY time it was administered) and still refused to eat peas and wanted her chocolate pudding. She got it - from then on, I cleaned my plate but she could leave stuff, so long as she tried it. It's a classic story in our house. I have a picky daughter and sometimes I will encourage her to try something new, but usually, I just let her eat at her own pace.