Our burger & chips family mealtime with McCain | #WeAreFamily

This is a sponsored post
==
Once you have a child, meal times go though a bit of an evolution.

In the early days of parenthood, you grab a bite to eat whenever – and wherever – you can in between all the new tasks you find yourself swamped with. For instance, dinner was often a pizza I ordered off an app while I winded or bottle-fed our baby.

Later, when solids begin, their feeding schedule is unlikely to coordinate with yours. So children are fed often at different times from the adults.

It can be easy for this to become the norm, as it did in our house. For instance, 5 years later, on weekdays my wife and I still have our main meal after our daughter goes to bed.

We realised we were getting into a bit of a bad habit, especially by doing things this way at weekends too. So now we make an effort to ensure we have weekend meals together.

Back to the early days of being mum & dad: We lived in New Zealand – where my wife is from – and our favoured takeaway was Burger Wisconsin (a precursor to the UK’s GBK) mainly because they were the only takeaway in walking distance – but I wasn’t complaining, as I love a good cheeseburger & chips.

Since moving back to the UK, it has remained a staple meal for us but now one we cook at home. We get our burgers from the local butcher and make sure we have a stash of McCain oven chips in the freezer.

In a family meal context, burgers & chips work great – we all love them, and they’re as easily consumed in the garden, on the sofa, or at the dining table.

We all start with the basic cheeseburger with chips – but from that base, we all have different preferences. Our daughter likes it just like this with ketchup. My wife and I add lettuce and tomato. I also like red onion and pickled beetroot. My wife adds mustard and ketchup. I dip mine in ketchup before each bite. For the chips, I like them with salt & vinegar while my wife and daughter prefer ketchup.

I was commissioned to write this post as part of McCain’s campaign to show the wider reality of family meals in the UK. Around half of Brits feel modern family life isn’t accurately represented – and more needs to be done to portray this. Most of us also think they don’t see anyone like their own family in popular culture.

So this is us. We’re not eating a trendy meal packed with superfoods do jour. We’re not trying to pretend we’re something we’re not. We’re just a mixed-race, mixed-nationality, modern British family, united by love – and burgers & chips.

=====

Disclosure: This is sponsored post for McCain foods, who are running the ‘We Are Family’ campaign. It aims to reflect the diversity, and at times awkward reality, of family mealtimes – which are often portrayed as blissful picture perfect settings which don’t reflect the reality of modern British family life.

4 thoughts on “Our burger & chips family mealtime with McCain | #WeAreFamily”

  1. I like the sound of this campaign! I usually end up eating tea with my children while my husband is at work, and we often resort to something from the freezer. Our combination usually involves a Quorn product with chips, since I am vegetarian, but my girls are meat eaters, like their father. One thing we all agree on is chips… with ketchup! 😉

  2. I’ve noticed a lot of high profile media coverage for the #wearefamily campaign. I so get the story you tell, the pressure of modern life and wanting to spend time with your other half meaning meal time with them happens later. As an aside, I love your table cloth.

Leave a Reply