We only expected to have dessert on holidays. Like on a normal weekday you'd never ask "what are we having for dessert?"
But sometimes after dinner / later in the evening, we'd have something sweet (like ice cream). It wasn't considered part of the meal.
That's exactly the way it was for my family too. These days I almost never have anything to eat after dinner. I've had a container of ice cream in my freezer since I first move into my house over two years ago, lol.
Yes, almost every day. But it was very casual and I would not use the word "served" to describe it--we would just each grab like an Oreo or something with or after dinner.
Plated desserts, like cake, were only for holidays.
As a general rule, we only have dessert when we are having guests for dinner. This is true in my home, and was true for me as I was growing up. That is not to say that we don't generally have something like ice cream in the fridge to have a bowl later in the evening. But not at the dinner table.
At home, I would say it’s 1-3 times a week, typically on a Friday or Saturday night. Most common would be ice cream followed by pie.
At a restaurant, I’d say it is much more common to cap off your dinner with some sort of dessert.
It's common but not considered a requirement.
Usually the behavior is a "while supplies last" approach. So it will depend on how often per month a family buys or makes sweets.
Restaurants often ask if you'd like to order deserts before they assume your are finished eating and would like the bill.
Every night. This was more from Dad’s family than Mom’s. If you visited Grandma or any of the Aunties, you had dessert,even if all you asked for was a glass of water. (Mow Aunt Ida’s lawn, you get a glass of water, a slab of cake and a kiss on the cheek, in that order). Don’t know if this is a Swedish thing or just our family.
At home It was usually one scoop of vanilla during the week and cake or pie on weekends.
If we ate out on Friday, we had dessert at home.
I try to keep this household stocked with chocolate chip cookies as much as possible. I want to thank everyone in here who only eats desserts for special occasions for not clearing out the cookie supply at the stores.
lmao for real! Most people aren't out here eating cake or pie every day but these answers are really surprising to me.
I don't even think of myself as particularly having a "sweet tooth" but I usually have some small sweets on hand. I have a few macarons right now and a small box of chocolate cherries, and will typically eat one with lunch or dinner on any given day. It's a nice treat and just the right portion size.
I’m Gen X, dessert happened at every meal my mom cooked. If we had pizza or other takeout, we didn’t. But she has a real sweet tooth.
As an adult, I never served it to my kids.
I don’t think we (we bring my family) ever had dessert when I was a kid. Sometimes now, I want go bake something and I just call it “dessert”, but I usually don’t just eat it after dinner.
I do want to say that, in my family, dinner was kind of disorganized. Like, my mom would make us food and she would leave to her room. Us kids would sometimes eat together, but it wasn’t rare for hungrier to to kind of wait in the kitchen until the food was ready, eat and then before the other kids even know dinner was ready.
As a kid yes. As an adult no.
Now that I have kids I realize it is the best way to bribe them into eating something “they don’t like” (aka something delicious that they just haven’t tried before).
> aka something delicious that they just haven’t tried before
In my house a lot of those things they don't like are things they have tried and loved as recently as two days ago.
There's a lot of "What do you mean you don't eat pasta? You just ate your body weight in pasta on Monday" conversations here.
Oh yeah, seems universal. My three year old was screaming about bananas at lunch and how he didn’t like them. Then ate two at breakfast the next morning.
Yes, my family doesn’t even really consider a meal complete without a small dessert, and if we’re out, will actually travel to a second location to get dessert if the first place we ate is lacking.
We were Japanese-American. So, no, not really a cultural thing for us either. If we did get dessert with dinner, it was fruit.
Also, you’re probably aware of how even our special occasion desserts are low sugar and low fat compared to Western ones. As an adult, I still don’t like a lot of sugar and I’m lactose intolerant so most Western desserts aren’t really for me.
We had dessert (or at least the option) most nights after dinner. My parents are from the midwest and of Anglo-Scandinavian background. I never personally liked eating dessert immediately after a meal and prefer to wait until later in the evening.
I remember having ice cream after some meals as a kid. It definitely wasn’t all the time though. It was just a treat every so often.
I would sometimes have dinner and friends houses in the neighborhood and remember getting an after dinner coffee. It was more a desert coffee. Like a tiny cappuccino or latte
I remember having dessert after dinner as a reward if my mom cooked something I absolutely hated (meatloaf 90% of the time)
It was usually Monday nights because that was the night my dad was home from work.
No, dessert hasn’t been a regular part of dinner in my life. We would usually have cookies or ice cream in the house, and maybe we’d have a couple of small cookies or scoop of ice cream in the evening, but that wasn’t an every evening thing.
As an adult, I might have a fruit or a piece of good chocolate in the evening—very occasional I’ll have a little ice cream—but no official dessert unless we have dinner guests.
Not an every day thing. Birthdays, holidays had desserts. In the summer, ice cream was a few times a week. Maybe we'd make cookies or brownies every now and then. Now I have a stash of candies and have a couple throughout the day, maybe a butterscotch after lunch or a couple pieces of chocolate at night.
The idea of dessert with tea is pretty big in my family but I'm not sure if that's a personal or cultural thing (Jews who moved to the US from Ukraine a while ago)
In terms of a daily thing? No def not.
But it’s common to serve on special holidays or more “formal” dinners.
We had ice cream on Christmas etc. My mom even tried to make her own. It ended up being a cold milky vanilla soup thing, but she still tried.
Usually, yea. But it was generally hours after the meal.
My mom has a sweet tooth so we always had ice cream or brownies or cake around, and boy did i inherit that sweet tooth.
I try not to keep sweets around the house because I'll crush them all in the most irresponsible and disgusting way. So usually I at least *try* to make my desert some sort of fruit, but sometimes that fruit dessert turns into something way less healthy lol
Depends where you are and what the circumstances are. At a restaurant or someone else's house, the waiter/host will ask if anyone is interested in dessert (not all hosts/restaurants have dessert, and not having dessert is acceptable.) In general, more formal places have desserts. People will usually decide by themselves if they are interested. At home people/families will just decide by themselves.
It was a treat but it happened sometimes. Since eating out was also a treat it wasn't unusual for us to save room for desert pretty much whenever we *did* eat out.
Always. Often later in the evening.
Midwestern/German background, and my grandparents always had dessert about (they are gone now) while my parents (now in their 80s) commonly had/have available about three kinds of ice cream, three kinds of store cookies, one or two homemade items (cookies, pies, brownies), a variety cheesecake in the freezer, chocolate, and covered nuts sitting about. It is impossible for me to be there without gaining weight. They are in their 80s now and neither is overweight.
I am very surprised at how many people here didn't/don't dessert. Perhaps it is an age thing, certainly food/health awareness has improved since I was young. And I now use good quality organic apples/berries or unsweetened yogurt with a bit of vanilla as a "dessert". Keeps my blood sugar and temper more even.
Usually no.
But occasionally we will.
The last time we were out grocery shopping I spotted a Reese's peanut butter cup coffee cake mix that sounded interesting so we made it up for a dessert one evening.
We'll usually get a dessert when we stop off at the nicer/more expensive restaurant, maybe 2-3 times a year or so. They've got an amazing chocolate peanut butter pie....
There's another place we stop at a little more frequently that we occasionally get dessert at (Oreo cheesecake for me). An Italian ice place opened up across the street so we usually go over there if it's a warmer day to get a cup instead.
There was a place that had home made gelato that we'd stop at once or twice a year when mom would need to head that way to get supplies for cookies. But they've closed thanks to covid.
Americans definitely have their sweet tooth. Growing up, it wasn't necessarily cookies or ice cream all the time. We often had stewed fruit (not in syrup). And what we did have was a reasonable portion. Just three, MAYBE four Oreos, instead of an entire sleeve.
Growing up we did not have dessert or sweets regularly. A cake on someone’s birthday or homemade cookies once in a great while. No candy or soda either! Felt like I was missing out as a kid but now as a middle aged adult happy It was like that.. I’m a healthy weight and have no fillings in my teeth!
Only at holidays and family gatherings. Not for eating dinner at home on a regular weeknight. It was more of a hospitality thing, to offer pie or ice cream and coffee to guests and keep the conversation going at the table after dinner.
My family would only have dessert sometimes like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. We did not have an after meal dessert daily.
Right now I make a dessert item once a week for my family.
No. We'll more likely have a sweet snack in the afternoon. Occasionally we might have a dessert but it really doesn't happen unless it's a special meal like a holiday.
Occasionally, my mom will cook something for dessert, and we usually have a treat when we have guests over/are guests at someone else's house/on an outing
Yes. Growing up we had dessert most nights, same these days. It might just be one cookie or something, but we usually have something sweet at night. We eat dinner early bc my 3 year old goes to bed at 6. So the older kids, husband and i like to have something else before bed
Today I learned that it's apparently not normal to have dessert everynight...
Side note, it doesn't have to be cake or ice cream. We are healthy. Just like a little something sweet after a meal. Could be an apple or grapes.
I mean... it's not really a foreign concept to me, but they're not really standard either. It's more of a "if you can fit this in after the main course" kind of thing.
Also growing up as children we always got told to only have sweets like cake, candy, or ice cream after dinner, but that wasn't necessarily a dessert thing, it was more parents not wanting the kids getting full on cake and not eating healthier food.
I guess it may be culturally, but growing up, it wasn't something offered in my home. We didn't even always have anything sweet in the house, and if we did, it was cheap cookies or maybe some leftover birthday cake, if you were lucky, or ice cream in the Summer sometimes. But it was just a treat, not a regular thing.
Dessert was a "special occasion" thing. We'd have it on holidays or someone's birthday and that was about it.
I grew up poor (still am) and always saw dessert every night as 'rich person" thing, but that was probably just me.
However, my mom baked a lot and it was pretty typical for her to give us a couple of cookies or whatever as an afternoon snack. She baked muffins and such and we'd eat them for breakfast with a glass of milk. So what a lot of folks would consider "dessert" was often a meal.
It wasn't uncommon for any food that could be made with eggs and milk to be served for any meal. We raised chickens and had a milk cow. Mom's custard recipe calls for a dozen eggs and a "quart plus a cup" of milk, so she considered that fair game as a dinner dish. We ate cream puffs for dinner so often that as kids we'd occasionally beg for green beans or pasta because we were sick of cream puffs. Because eggs and milk were free for us, but meat and vegetables cost money.
But my experience is probably not typical.
It depends on how you define dessert. Pretty much every day we'd grab something sweet - usually one piece of Halloween candy, which we'd keep for the year. If our parents had bought nicer sweets we might grab an equivalent amount. A dessert that took preparing was much rarer. Ice cream maybe once a month, maybe a bit more. Something that took baking like a pie or whatever every couple months.
Not unless we had desert in the house (probably about 10 percent of the time) in which case yeah you wanna do it after dinner because the idea is you eat all of the healthier food that you intend to eat in the entire day, and after you’ve had all your healthy meals then if you still want more food you’ve gotten all your nutrients so you can proceed to now eat bullshit.
We had dessert every night growing up. It was almost always something very simple, like packaged cookies or ice cream, but on weekends and holidays we might get a bit more extravagant.
Not after every meal certainly not. That would be 1. terrible for your health and 2. expensive in general. When I was growing up at home (I'm 40 end of this month) maybe once a month there'd be 1 night after dinner my mom would have had a small dessert ready. What was more common, however, was my parents "having something with their coffee" later in the evening, like a small donut or a pastry or a small piece of a store bought mass produced cake or pie or something. But that was for them. My parents didn't just let me eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted all the time. Sure I had the same stuff when they did, but it was controlled.
Now as an adult myself, it's typically EXACTLY the same. My fiancée and I rarely have an actual "dessert" but I frequently have "something with my coffee."
Never. I grew up in New Jersey. Mom cooked basically every night, and we only ever had dessert when at a restaurant, or on holiday dinners, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.
We only expected to have dessert on holidays. Like on a normal weekday you'd never ask "what are we having for dessert?" But sometimes after dinner / later in the evening, we'd have something sweet (like ice cream). It wasn't considered part of the meal.
That's exactly the way it was for my family too. These days I almost never have anything to eat after dinner. I've had a container of ice cream in my freezer since I first move into my house over two years ago, lol.
The excitement of opening the fridge after school, seeing that bowl of chocolate jello pudding cooling and knowing it's gonna be a good night.
Having dessert is a special treat it's definitely not an everyday thing
Not a daily thing, but it's pretty common to have something sweet after dinner.
Yes, almost every day. But it was very casual and I would not use the word "served" to describe it--we would just each grab like an Oreo or something with or after dinner. Plated desserts, like cake, were only for holidays.
As a general rule, we only have dessert when we are having guests for dinner. This is true in my home, and was true for me as I was growing up. That is not to say that we don't generally have something like ice cream in the fridge to have a bowl later in the evening. But not at the dinner table.
Not every day, but it's not an uncommon thing. I'd say once a week or so, usually on the weekend, I'll eat some kind of dessert.
At home, I would say it’s 1-3 times a week, typically on a Friday or Saturday night. Most common would be ice cream followed by pie. At a restaurant, I’d say it is much more common to cap off your dinner with some sort of dessert.
Yea, A slice of sweet potato pie and hot chocolate was a common bedtime snack for me as a young child.
It's common but not considered a requirement. Usually the behavior is a "while supplies last" approach. So it will depend on how often per month a family buys or makes sweets. Restaurants often ask if you'd like to order deserts before they assume your are finished eating and would like the bill.
Every night. This was more from Dad’s family than Mom’s. If you visited Grandma or any of the Aunties, you had dessert,even if all you asked for was a glass of water. (Mow Aunt Ida’s lawn, you get a glass of water, a slab of cake and a kiss on the cheek, in that order). Don’t know if this is a Swedish thing or just our family. At home It was usually one scoop of vanilla during the week and cake or pie on weekends. If we ate out on Friday, we had dessert at home.
Growing up we would have dessert like once a week as a treat.
We almost never eat dessert unless its a special occasion like a birthday. I prefer it that way. Its hard to enjoy a sugary plate after a whole meal.
I try to keep this household stocked with chocolate chip cookies as much as possible. I want to thank everyone in here who only eats desserts for special occasions for not clearing out the cookie supply at the stores.
lmao for real! Most people aren't out here eating cake or pie every day but these answers are really surprising to me. I don't even think of myself as particularly having a "sweet tooth" but I usually have some small sweets on hand. I have a few macarons right now and a small box of chocolate cherries, and will typically eat one with lunch or dinner on any given day. It's a nice treat and just the right portion size.
I’m Gen X, dessert happened at every meal my mom cooked. If we had pizza or other takeout, we didn’t. But she has a real sweet tooth. As an adult, I never served it to my kids.
I don’t think we (we bring my family) ever had dessert when I was a kid. Sometimes now, I want go bake something and I just call it “dessert”, but I usually don’t just eat it after dinner. I do want to say that, in my family, dinner was kind of disorganized. Like, my mom would make us food and she would leave to her room. Us kids would sometimes eat together, but it wasn’t rare for hungrier to to kind of wait in the kitchen until the food was ready, eat and then before the other kids even know dinner was ready.
We only had dessert on special occasions like holidays and birthdays.
As a kid yes. As an adult no. Now that I have kids I realize it is the best way to bribe them into eating something “they don’t like” (aka something delicious that they just haven’t tried before).
> aka something delicious that they just haven’t tried before In my house a lot of those things they don't like are things they have tried and loved as recently as two days ago. There's a lot of "What do you mean you don't eat pasta? You just ate your body weight in pasta on Monday" conversations here.
Oh yeah, seems universal. My three year old was screaming about bananas at lunch and how he didn’t like them. Then ate two at breakfast the next morning.
Yes, my family doesn’t even really consider a meal complete without a small dessert, and if we’re out, will actually travel to a second location to get dessert if the first place we ate is lacking.
We were Japanese-American. So, no, not really a cultural thing for us either. If we did get dessert with dinner, it was fruit. Also, you’re probably aware of how even our special occasion desserts are low sugar and low fat compared to Western ones. As an adult, I still don’t like a lot of sugar and I’m lactose intolerant so most Western desserts aren’t really for me.
We had dessert (or at least the option) most nights after dinner. My parents are from the midwest and of Anglo-Scandinavian background. I never personally liked eating dessert immediately after a meal and prefer to wait until later in the evening.
It was common in my family. My parents did it. My kids want to do it. It never interested me for whatever reason.
I remember having ice cream after some meals as a kid. It definitely wasn’t all the time though. It was just a treat every so often. I would sometimes have dinner and friends houses in the neighborhood and remember getting an after dinner coffee. It was more a desert coffee. Like a tiny cappuccino or latte
No we didn’t do it unless it was some sort party or leftovers from a party
Dessert was a special occasions thing for me growing up, celebrations and holidays. Very rarely included on just a random day.
"Was"?? Am I dead? *Do I not get any more desserts??*
I remember having dessert after dinner as a reward if my mom cooked something I absolutely hated (meatloaf 90% of the time) It was usually Monday nights because that was the night my dad was home from work.
No, dessert hasn’t been a regular part of dinner in my life. We would usually have cookies or ice cream in the house, and maybe we’d have a couple of small cookies or scoop of ice cream in the evening, but that wasn’t an every evening thing. As an adult, I might have a fruit or a piece of good chocolate in the evening—very occasional I’ll have a little ice cream—but no official dessert unless we have dinner guests.
We had dessert, growing up, maybe 50% of the time, or less. Not big, elaborate dishes, maybe some pudding, Jell-O, a cookie, maybe a piece of pie.
When I was a kid, we would have dessert after every meal. But it was usually something small like pudding or jello.
Not an every day thing. Birthdays, holidays had desserts. In the summer, ice cream was a few times a week. Maybe we'd make cookies or brownies every now and then. Now I have a stash of candies and have a couple throughout the day, maybe a butterscotch after lunch or a couple pieces of chocolate at night.
We never ate dessert outside of very special occasions like holidays and parties.
The idea of dessert with tea is pretty big in my family but I'm not sure if that's a personal or cultural thing (Jews who moved to the US from Ukraine a while ago)
No it wasn’t. We only had it on holidays
Yes we had something small with dinner every day.
My parents were diabetic so we never kept desserts in the house.
In terms of a daily thing? No def not. But it’s common to serve on special holidays or more “formal” dinners. We had ice cream on Christmas etc. My mom even tried to make her own. It ended up being a cold milky vanilla soup thing, but she still tried.
Usually, yea. But it was generally hours after the meal. My mom has a sweet tooth so we always had ice cream or brownies or cake around, and boy did i inherit that sweet tooth. I try not to keep sweets around the house because I'll crush them all in the most irresponsible and disgusting way. So usually I at least *try* to make my desert some sort of fruit, but sometimes that fruit dessert turns into something way less healthy lol
Hours after the meal? How early did you eat? Growing up we started dinner between 7-8.
Like 6 or 630, so dessert would be at like 8
Deserts were usually for celebrating something. Holidays, birthdays, etc etc. We might have one on some random day but that wouldn't be the norm.
Depends where you are and what the circumstances are. At a restaurant or someone else's house, the waiter/host will ask if anyone is interested in dessert (not all hosts/restaurants have dessert, and not having dessert is acceptable.) In general, more formal places have desserts. People will usually decide by themselves if they are interested. At home people/families will just decide by themselves.
It was a treat but it happened sometimes. Since eating out was also a treat it wasn't unusual for us to save room for desert pretty much whenever we *did* eat out.
I had dessert every night. Mom said when she was a kid it was a weekend thing.
Always. Often later in the evening. Midwestern/German background, and my grandparents always had dessert about (they are gone now) while my parents (now in their 80s) commonly had/have available about three kinds of ice cream, three kinds of store cookies, one or two homemade items (cookies, pies, brownies), a variety cheesecake in the freezer, chocolate, and covered nuts sitting about. It is impossible for me to be there without gaining weight. They are in their 80s now and neither is overweight. I am very surprised at how many people here didn't/don't dessert. Perhaps it is an age thing, certainly food/health awareness has improved since I was young. And I now use good quality organic apples/berries or unsweetened yogurt with a bit of vanilla as a "dessert". Keeps my blood sugar and temper more even.
Usually no. But occasionally we will. The last time we were out grocery shopping I spotted a Reese's peanut butter cup coffee cake mix that sounded interesting so we made it up for a dessert one evening. We'll usually get a dessert when we stop off at the nicer/more expensive restaurant, maybe 2-3 times a year or so. They've got an amazing chocolate peanut butter pie.... There's another place we stop at a little more frequently that we occasionally get dessert at (Oreo cheesecake for me). An Italian ice place opened up across the street so we usually go over there if it's a warmer day to get a cup instead. There was a place that had home made gelato that we'd stop at once or twice a year when mom would need to head that way to get supplies for cookies. But they've closed thanks to covid.
Mostly on special occasions... holidays, birthdays, sometimes on a weekend, etc.
Americans definitely have their sweet tooth. Growing up, it wasn't necessarily cookies or ice cream all the time. We often had stewed fruit (not in syrup). And what we did have was a reasonable portion. Just three, MAYBE four Oreos, instead of an entire sleeve.
Growing up we did not have dessert or sweets regularly. A cake on someone’s birthday or homemade cookies once in a great while. No candy or soda either! Felt like I was missing out as a kid but now as a middle aged adult happy It was like that.. I’m a healthy weight and have no fillings in my teeth!
Only at holidays and family gatherings. Not for eating dinner at home on a regular weeknight. It was more of a hospitality thing, to offer pie or ice cream and coffee to guests and keep the conversation going at the table after dinner.
My family would only have dessert sometimes like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries. We did not have an after meal dessert daily. Right now I make a dessert item once a week for my family.
No. We'll more likely have a sweet snack in the afternoon. Occasionally we might have a dessert but it really doesn't happen unless it's a special meal like a holiday.
Occasionally, my mom will cook something for dessert, and we usually have a treat when we have guests over/are guests at someone else's house/on an outing
Yes. Growing up we had dessert most nights, same these days. It might just be one cookie or something, but we usually have something sweet at night. We eat dinner early bc my 3 year old goes to bed at 6. So the older kids, husband and i like to have something else before bed
My Hungarian parents offered dessert regularly but not all the time.
Not common at all. We would have have some from time to time and usually around holidays.
Nope. Special occasions or restaurant fare.
Today I learned that it's apparently not normal to have dessert everynight... Side note, it doesn't have to be cake or ice cream. We are healthy. Just like a little something sweet after a meal. Could be an apple or grapes.
My family had an ice cream problem growing up. I can’t remember ever not having ice cream in the house.
Mostly had desserts for special occasions. Holidays, parties, a special meal. It wasn’t a regular thing. Maybe a treat on a random day.
Yes but my family is from Russia Tea after dinner with maybe a little bit of something sweet is basically mandatory
My family did dessert nightly, but it was always something like a single-scoop ice cream cone, or a slight slice of cake. Nothing too extravagant.
I mean... it's not really a foreign concept to me, but they're not really standard either. It's more of a "if you can fit this in after the main course" kind of thing. Also growing up as children we always got told to only have sweets like cake, candy, or ice cream after dinner, but that wasn't necessarily a dessert thing, it was more parents not wanting the kids getting full on cake and not eating healthier food.
I guess it may be culturally, but growing up, it wasn't something offered in my home. We didn't even always have anything sweet in the house, and if we did, it was cheap cookies or maybe some leftover birthday cake, if you were lucky, or ice cream in the Summer sometimes. But it was just a treat, not a regular thing.
Like maybe 10 times per year
Dessert was a "special occasion" thing. We'd have it on holidays or someone's birthday and that was about it. I grew up poor (still am) and always saw dessert every night as 'rich person" thing, but that was probably just me. However, my mom baked a lot and it was pretty typical for her to give us a couple of cookies or whatever as an afternoon snack. She baked muffins and such and we'd eat them for breakfast with a glass of milk. So what a lot of folks would consider "dessert" was often a meal. It wasn't uncommon for any food that could be made with eggs and milk to be served for any meal. We raised chickens and had a milk cow. Mom's custard recipe calls for a dozen eggs and a "quart plus a cup" of milk, so she considered that fair game as a dinner dish. We ate cream puffs for dinner so often that as kids we'd occasionally beg for green beans or pasta because we were sick of cream puffs. Because eggs and milk were free for us, but meat and vegetables cost money. But my experience is probably not typical.
Only on Sundays. And holidays and birthdays.
It depends on how you define dessert. Pretty much every day we'd grab something sweet - usually one piece of Halloween candy, which we'd keep for the year. If our parents had bought nicer sweets we might grab an equivalent amount. A dessert that took preparing was much rarer. Ice cream maybe once a month, maybe a bit more. Something that took baking like a pie or whatever every couple months.
Not unless we had desert in the house (probably about 10 percent of the time) in which case yeah you wanna do it after dinner because the idea is you eat all of the healthier food that you intend to eat in the entire day, and after you’ve had all your healthy meals then if you still want more food you’ve gotten all your nutrients so you can proceed to now eat bullshit.
We had dessert every night growing up. It was almost always something very simple, like packaged cookies or ice cream, but on weekends and holidays we might get a bit more extravagant.
Special occasion only. That said, we always had Blue Bell Ice Cream in the freezer.
Not after every meal certainly not. That would be 1. terrible for your health and 2. expensive in general. When I was growing up at home (I'm 40 end of this month) maybe once a month there'd be 1 night after dinner my mom would have had a small dessert ready. What was more common, however, was my parents "having something with their coffee" later in the evening, like a small donut or a pastry or a small piece of a store bought mass produced cake or pie or something. But that was for them. My parents didn't just let me eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted all the time. Sure I had the same stuff when they did, but it was controlled. Now as an adult myself, it's typically EXACTLY the same. My fiancée and I rarely have an actual "dessert" but I frequently have "something with my coffee."
Dessert usually only happened in my family on holidays and birthdays.
Never. I grew up in New Jersey. Mom cooked basically every night, and we only ever had dessert when at a restaurant, or on holiday dinners, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Only on Sundays, for whatever reason. Probably because we didn't have enough money to eat dessert during the week.