I grew up in a family that had dinner together every night at home.

My mom would cook, and unless there was a meat, vegetable, and starch on the plate, she wouldn’t consider it a proper meal (except for spaghetti or pizza night, those were ok.)

You might be thinking, “What a dream… a delicious home-cooked meal every night.” Well yeah, but if you know me at all, you know that I LOVE, not like, LOVE fast food.

My mother HATES fast food and refuses to see how anyone could enjoy it.

I’d beg for McDonald’s, and the most we’d get is Burger King maybe 4 times a year because it was closer to our house.

She orchestrated a smear campaign against McDonald’s saying how disgusting it was because they put onions on everything and never took them off even if you asked.

I thought I hated onions too until I was older and gave them a chance.

Now, after goffing down a McDonald’s hamburger, I pick up every last onion stuck to the wrapper until it’s clean.

I’m not knocking Burger King though. I don’t even consider it second best to McDonald’s. To me, it’s like apples and oranges – different but equally delicious.

In fact, last night I drove all the way to Burger King (which really is far from my house), because I needed to try the new Game Day Pretzel Bun Burger. (If you ever want to lure me away, just hang a pretzel bun from a stick and I’ll follow blindly.)

BK did not disappoint. This thing was phenomenal. Where Wendy’s pretzel bun can be a bit too dense (but I power through!) this was perfection.

Sorry about the fast food tangent, it’s not what I intended for this blog.

What I was trying to say is that in my own family now, we eat dinner together almost every night, but instead of sitting around the table, we binge TV shows.

Old me would’ve thought that was a terrible idea because then you don’t discuss your day. But instead, this tradition has bonded us immensely.

We discuss the shows long after we’ve finished watching them; we have inside jokes and memes that clog our family group chat; and most importantly, we have that family time that we never would have gotten unless my kids were being fed first.

These are the shows we’ve watched:

• Breaking Bad
• The Sopranos (twice)
• Peaky Blinders
• Mad Men
• Barry
• Succession
• Band of Brothers
• Better Call Saul
• Currently watching Six Feet Under

These are in no particular order because I can’t remember how we watched them, and just like BK & McD’s, they’re all so good that I can’t possibly say which is best.

Sometimes we debate which is best – The Sopranos usually being majority rule. The only stinker is Peaky Blinders because of the last few seasons. They blame me for that one. I mean, I knew it was bad by the end but the first few seasons are so good I thought it would make up for it. It didn’t. Sorry, just like pretzel buns, I’m a sucker for Cillian Murphy 🤷🏼‍♀️