Last week I mentioned sandwiches are “depressing” to have for dinner in my “Should sandwiches be cut?” post*, and I started to talk about it more in the comments, so here’s a whole post about it, since it’s come up a lot recently BECAUSE ALL WE TALK ABOUT IS FOOD.
Ha, okay, not really, but whoa, so much food and shopping talk, understandably, while we’re all under our different stay-at-home orders and trying to find normalcy in our eating and buying when things are so bizarre. I have my COVID-19 Check-in post drafted for the week, and most of it is food-related, again! Sigh. Anyway.
In the comments on the sandwich post, Bethany said she also finds sandwiches for dinner extremely sad because she wants real food for dinner – something heartier (the definition of hearty for food is “wholesome and substantial”). I’m the exact same way. I’d rather have a light breakfast and lunch, and a heartier (and WARM!!!**) dinner, even though it’s probably not the brightest idea to eat a big/substantial meal before bed.
Steven and I have been this way for years though. We do our own thing for breakfast each day, we have a salad and leftovers for lunch, and a hearty meal (something new or heated up leftovers) for dinner. A burger for dinner (with sides!) is okay because it’s warm and filling. A cold sandwich? No! It leaves me unsatisfied!
This might be unusual. Some people I talk to do a heartier lunch and light dinner. And some people don’t even have dinner – they just have a snack, if anything. (And I am not even going to get in to intermittent fasting, since that’s not something I do!) I wonder if Steven and I will change when we get older – we’ve definitely noticed that trend.
So, tell me, is this something you pay attention to AT ALL? Click through to take my poll!
[poll id=”19″]
*The most selected answer was “diagonally”!
**I don’t think I could ever be a raw vegan! I just like warm food too much!
I don’t mind sandwiches for dinner. Dinner does tend to be our heartiest meal, and lunches and breakfasts are everyone putting things together on their own. But when we have sandwiches for dinner they tend to be heartier. We regularly do veggie banh mi’s. And like you said, veggie burgers are always an option. We had been planning on doing eggplant “parmesan” subs this week but the grocery store was weirdly out of eggplants.
That is odd they were out of eggplant! I wonder if the grocery store used it as a sub for orders for things they were out of and that made them run out of it! LOL. Sigh.
Do you count a veggie burger as a sandwich? Steven does, and he says it’s breaks my sandwiches are sad for dinner rule. (Like, last night, we had vegan Cordon Blue chicken burgers… or as he would say, sandwiches. LOL.)
I have a generous sandwich definition 🙂 So veggie burgers do count as sandwiches to me.
I think that needs to be my next poll because you might be one of many who think that way! 🙂
I run hot and cold (HAHA) on dinner – most often we have a normal meal, or big salads which are obviously cold, but if I’ve had a nice big lunch, some cereal or yogurt is all I want for dinner. One of my kid’s friends used to have an eat whatever you want dinner on Friday nights (his parents wanted a break) and he’d come over after having eaten Pop Tarts for dinner. Even my kids thought that was a little extreme.
Hee hee! I think it would be good for me to break away from having to feel like dinner needs to be my heartiest meal, because I do have a bigger lunch every once in a while and could have something smaller, like you do (Ha, when we get HuHot for lunch, we almost always have salads for dinner!).
Oh my gosh! Pop tarts seems extreme to me too. I wonder at what age they started that!
Since working with my RD I now have the bulk of my calories at lunch/earlier in the day. This works well for me because I do intermittent fasting (no breakfast) and I work out when I get home from work. So the calories before that support the workout. We also tend to eat dinner quite late so it’s best not to eat a huge meal so close to bedtime. Also, I’m not as hungry after a tough workout. Food isn’t as appealing then. But, everyone is different and you have to do what works for you! I hate when people says “you should…” or “you shouldn’t…”.
That sounds like it works out really well for you! Awesome! I am usually not hungry after a big workout either, even when I do it first thing in the morning. I am usually hungriest the day after a big workout. Ha! (Like yesterday, the day after I did my long run, my stomach felt like it was rumbling most of the day.)
And yes, everyone should do what works for them! Fueling is so unique to each person! We all have to experiment and see what works for us 🙂
I’m definitely a big proponent of a big hearty dinner. I have such great memories of these growing up, with the whole family sitting down for a meal. We don’t do that so much now, but when Emma is here we equal four and I try to have a least one family sit-down meal during her visits.
You know I love a big meal with everyone at the table too! We did those a lot with our extended family when we were kids and I enjoyed them then, and now! I hope you get to see Emma soon 🙁
Aw, thanks for the shoutout!
I voted for dinner BUT I think it depends on the weekend vs. weekday. I’m a big proponent of consuming basically an entire day’s worth of calories at breakfast/brunch on the weekends (pancakes! Waffles! French toast! Omelettes! Skillets! Scrambles! Not all of those at one meal, of course, but there are so many possibilities and they’re all so filling.), but I would never do that on a normal weekday. A vacation weekday, maybe, but not a working weekday. I’d be way too full to concentrate on work if I ate like that on a workday. But on a weekend, especially after a really long run? Yes please.
This has made me do some reflecting on my childhood, and I realized that growing up, we’d usually have light breakfasts/lunches and hearty dinners on weekdays, big breakfasts, possibly no lunch, and a lightish dinner (pizza and salad, always) on Saturdays, and a lightish breakfast (scrambled eggs + pastry), a HUGE lunch that we actually called dinner (meat + potatoes + vegetables), and a light dinner that we called supper (usually, actually, a hot sandwich! Tuna melts!) on Sundays. I don’t really do much of this anymore, I guess because it doesn’t make sense to cook, like, an entire pot roast for two people, but I definitely have it in my mind that I’d go back to this way of eating when we have a bigger family. We had such a regimented way of eating growing up–not in, like, a disordered way or anything like that, but more in an extremely predictable way that I so strongly associate with family meals that to me it’s like, “Well, of course that’s how we’ll eat as a family. That’s the only way TO eat as a family.” Ha.
You’re welcome!
Ha, I never thought about that (because for us it’s almost ALWAYS dinner ;)). I bet a lot of people love to have a huge breakfast on the weekends. And I have seen some impressive breakfast buffets in my lifetime!
I wonder why your family developed that routine, especially the weekend one, since it was different for each day! And it’s totally normal to think that is the way a family eats! That is how you were raised to! How did Joe’s family eat?
I came from a family that called dinner “supper” (but lunch “lunch”). Did you switch to lunch and dinner when you moved to Chicagoland?
I giggled with each new picture unveiled in this post! Oh, Khali.
I guess I don’t really think about it all that much. I would rather eat a big meal at lunch than at dinner, I think, because I don’t sleep well if I eat too much at night. I also loooove getting a sub for dinner – it’s one of my favorite treats! Then again, I find it too sad to eat, like, a bowl of cereal for dinner. I just feel like that’s single-girl rock bottom! 😉
I am glad you liked the series! I was totally giggling when I found all these pics of her to share!
That is a very good reason to eat a bigger lunch! Steven is the same way – if we have dinner too late he feels awful and can’t sleep (so that’s one of the nice things about right now – we eat a lot earlier). Do you have anything with your dinner sub? Cereal is just never filling! It’s a snack!
I think lunch *should* be the heartiest, but I agree, warm food tastes better at dinner. (And conversely, I’d feel strange eating something heavy like lasagna for lunch.) I will sometimes eat sandwiches for dinner, but it’s more like a melt with hot soup (still warm and hearty)!
Ooo! So is that what you guys usually do – heartier lunch?
Yeah, I am totally fine with a hot melt or something for dinner. I should be really specific that I don’t want a cold cut for dinner. Ha!