Our family keeps conservative kosher. This means we eat in restaurants and at non-kosher friend's houses but we keep kosher rules in mind with each food choice. I find that bringing G-d into mundane tasks, like eating, reminds me to think outside of myself. Even when I choose to eat a non-kosher meal, I pause to think and that keeps G-d in the equation despite my choice to "break the rules."
As our children have gotten older, these choices have gotten harder.
Kosher food costs more than non-kosher, the kids get pressure from their friends to try new things and school lunches offer an appealing alternative to busy mornings. Despite these challenges, our kids choose to follow the rules most of the time and when they break them they do so in a thoughtful manner that I am proud of.
For those who don't know, kosher is more than avoiding pork and shell fish. The rules of kashrut, or keeping kosher, require that milk and meat never touch or be included in the same meal, that animals be treated humanely in life and that they be slaughtered painlessly. The rule necessitating the separation of milk and meat reads that "the calf shall not be cooked in the milk of it's mother." It is literally understood as the requirement to keep the two types of food separate at all times, but the underlying imagery is one of kindness and compassion toward the animals we eat. This especially speaks to our children and while they are sometimes curious about the tastes of forbidden foods, they have not been tempted by cheeseburgers.