I have great memories of family dinners growing up. Sunday was "sauce day" in my Italian household. The house would smell like sauce and meatballs all day long as it simmered on the stove. And we'd all feast later on in the day. I will carry on the tradition and Sundays will be "sauce days" in my house too.

Anyone else have meal rituals they are carrying on with their own families?

Here are some family dinner tips, courtesy of Birmingham Parent:

*Start the pattern of family dinners when your children are young

*Use Sundays as the day to pick several nights during the upcoming week when the entire family can eat together -- and try to stick to this schedule

*Encourage your kids to create menu ideas and participate in meal preparation

*Turn off the TV, video games, iPods, cell phones and computers and let the answering machine take care of the calls while you are eating

*Talk about what happened in everyone's day: school, work, extracurricular activities or current events

*Establish a routine to start and end each meal -- eat dessert or play a board game after dinner to continue the conversation and time spent together.

*Keep the "table talk" positive, respectful and loving -- and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak.

We eat together at the kitchen table AT LEAST once a day - twice a day on my hubby's days off.
But I have no childhood memories of family dinners to use as a guide for my own: We only ate together, at the table, on special occasions when I was a kid.
And when I was a teen, I made my own meals & ate them whenever- as did my brother and sister.