Takeaways every night !

So sorry for your loss. The range of takeaways you're managing to get sound amazing and nutritious! Agree with others that moving to ready meals and freezer meals would be the next step when you're ready to take it.

After that have a look at the Taming Twins website and her book What's for Dinner, it's advertised as all the meals take under 30 minutes which is true for the most part but I'm a very slow chopper so any with more than two veg in that require dicing take me more like 45 minutes. It also has a meal planner at the front which has I think 8 weeks worth of meal plans and shopping lists so it takes the mental load out of the equation a little bit.

Don’t be hard on yourself OP you’re in a really tough situation. I second Hello Fresh they’re brilliant but there still is a bit of prep needed. What about these 5 minute meals- you know even just beans on toast or pasta with pesto or cream cheese stirred through? Fish fingers n oven chips/beans? These things may not be fine dining but they’re a hell of a lot healthier & cheaper than the take outs!

Sorry for your loss 💐 Why not try some of the roasting tin recipe books by Rukmini Iyer? I have 3 of the books because they’re so simple. I also like the fact many of the recipes include veg. Less washing up too! They’re often on offer on Amazon or you could borrow them from your library.

Apart from that, keep things simple. There’s nothing wrong with doing a salmon fillet, broccoli and new potatoes, or a chicken breast, salad and a bread roll. The more you do it, the easier it will get.

Finally, do you think you’re hungry when you leave work so you get a takeaway? If so, try an afternoon snack (maybe for the children too). This will ward off the starving feeling and allow you time to cook a simple meal. Plan out your meals and use a supermarket delivery service to save time.

When I've struggled I've used these.

www.cookfood.net

Better than a lot of ready meals and takeouts and may start a routine of preparing food at home

Check your messages @Lookwhostalking25 ❤

Is there a relative you could pay to batch cook for you? Thats what I would do and wish I could do.

Here are a few more easy ideas

Jackets with tuna and sweetcorn

Spaghetti and meatballs - you can cook the meatballs in the oven so all you need to do is stand for 10mins and cook some Spaghetti and grate some cheese. Serve with a bag of salad.

Traybakes - pack of sausages, cut some new potatoes in half, handful of cherry tomatoes and some brocoli, drizzle with oil and cook for 30 mins. Can do similar with chicken drumsticks and other vet, corn on the cobs work well.

Pittas Falafel (ready made) and salad or chicken dippers if the kids don't like Falafel.

Soup and sausage sarnies.

Another idea if you the logistics find prepping and cooking and getting food on the table quickly enough in the evenings is to cook or prep the night before for the next day. So say you are having a nice easy meal like soup this evening, once it's done and you are clearing up whip up a quick spag bol sauce or curry. You can buy pre cut frozen onion, garlic, ginger and curry paste, cook that down for a few mins, add some chicken and maybe frozen butternut squash cubes for some veg and a can of coconut milk. Ready cooked rice pouches speed things up.

You can also cook a chicken the night before, just bung it in the oven when you get home for whatever the cooking time is, let it cook and put in the fridge, cold roast chicken and salad and even some fries the next day.

Try to have a routine that works with all your clubs/ commitments. For example when we have double swimming lessons it's always fresh pasta and a sauce because it needs to be quick and easy. On a night where I can get home a bit earlier I do something in the oven etc.

@Ihopeithinkiknow

I'm so sorry to hear you lost your son and your partner. 💕💕💕💕

@User79853257976

You still have to cut things up etc? Just at a different time of day!

Barely.

Simple curry: diced raw chicken breast, coconut cream, curry powder, tablespoon of lazy garlic, squeeze of ginger from a tube, frozen chopped onions, chickpeas, chilli flakes. Stir in garam masala and spoonful of mango chutney 10 minutes before serving.

Bolognese: mince, lazy garlic, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, finely chopped carrot, oregano, salt and pepper, frozen chopped onions, beef stock cube. Fling some peas in for ten minutes at the end if you fancy.

Chilli: mince, lazy garlic, chopped tomatoes, tomato purée, frozen chopped onions, kidney beans, cumin. Serve with chopped avocado, lime, sour cream and grated cheese.

With all of these you simply put the ingredients into the slow cooker at lunchtime and give them a good mix. Ready to eat at dinner with pasta, rice, wraps or baked potatoes.

So sorry for your loss. You’ve a lot to deal with, please be kind to yourself.
We enjoyed hello fresh and then once we did it for a while, just copied the recipes. By we, I mean me and DD10 who is now a good little chef.
what about roasting a chicken and having the leftovers with some pesto and pasta and a maybe some peas and sweetcorn. I use a slow cooker too. Shove everything in before work and dinner is ready when I get home. Game changer

Hats off to you by the way. If you can do 2 longer cooked things on sat/sun and make a bigger batch, you have mon/tues sorted. So a Bolognese and sausages/mash and veg. Then beans on toast on wed/ jacket and filling on Thursday (second using frozen ones if you need)/pizza night on Friday.

Air fryers are great for beige food, recrossing things, boiled eggs (yes really), sausages, bacon, heating up croissants so a good aid for quicker stuff.

Those stir fry meal kits for two that most supermarkets do might be enough for your family - might need to add an extra chicken breast, prawns from the freezer or couple of boiled eggs or scramble a couple of eggs to make it an 'egg fried' version.

The best way to batch cook is to start your stock up by having a couple of hours to make the initial meals - so dedicate a batch cooking time e.g an evening when the kids are in bed and make a few different things- a shepherd's pie, a pasta bolognaise, something in the slow cooker etc etc. See if you can get 3 or 4 different things done and portion into tupperware for the freezer (make sure you label unless you like playing freezer roulette)

Once you have done this then everytime you cook something freezable make a double portion to add to freezer stock. Aim to cook say 3x a week and portion up the left overs. Maybe once a month do another batch cooking session to replenish the freezer stocks.

By doing this you can have healthy home cooked food without needing to cook every night. We eat out of the freezer 3 nights a week due to kids having clubs and this is what worked for us.

Air fryers are great because you can cook freezer food in them, jacket potato’s etc, and things take much less time. I also love a slow cooker so I can shove everything in in the morning and go. Some people bag up portions for the slow cooker (like bolognaise ingredients) and freeze them before hand, which you could do at the weekend, so you literally just throw in the bag contents and go, then when you get back you’ve just got to heat some pasta.

You still have to cut things up etc? Just at a different time of day!

I also like the steam fresh frozen bags of rice/veg that can be served with (air) fried protein of choice - chicken, halloumi, sausages, salmon etc.

Never mind going straight from can't get past a takeaway/delivery because of tiredness, business and generally having to do everything to batchcooking stuff for a month in one evening, go for the easy - chicken dippers & chips, filled pasta, tub of sauce and salad, microwaved veg and marinaded chicken thighs, microwave rice/veg and all the thing that require 20 mins in an oven plus a microwave and opening bags of leaves.

It's just too much of a switch to do everything from scratch/instantly.

Once that's OK, then maybe start doing things like chilli or curry when you've got a bit more time.

Exactly this. Don't be be too hard on yourself 💐

Another warning against Hello Fresh/Gousto. Unless you choose carefully, they take quite a lot of involved cooking, which you don't have the time/headspace for.

The list above is probably the most achievable thing to try. If you could use a few of these to put together a shopping list that you can then order for delivery once a week would that work?

Agree, super quick and you can add some garlic bread too

Do the older two have school dinners? When my two did, they had super quick meals in the evening. Things like beans on toast with grated cheese, or mum's surprise pasta - basically any veg that needed using up or what was left from the Sunday roast. The kids loved it!
I agree re getting a slow cooker. Bung it all in and leave it.
It sounds as if you're doing an amazing job.

It's hard enough with 2 children and a husband. Kudos to you OP.

Try
Jacket spuds one night
Things on toast one night
Fresh pasta eg: tortellini & pesto one night
Roast chicken and a load of veg roasted with it . Roast extra chicken for wraps/stir fry later in the week
Supermarket pizza
Can you manage to peel some potatoes the night/morning before to make sausage and mash for tea later?
Grilled fish/fingers/microwave rice/frozen veg?

This looks good if you're short of time https://stockedfood.com/?tw_source=google&tw_adid=690396971173&tw_campaign=19602133409&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwi_exBhA8EiwA_kU1Mm8K00HbEvv2HjsuAIHPDawWberdraOxSi0hCOthK47C5P__eu97WxoCglwQAvD_BwE

I don’t HelloFresh either, either I cook or I buy something properly prepped, oven ready.

You sound strong and independent OP, but is there anyone you could ask to help a bit?

If not could you find somewhere you could buy a proper meal, for instance a male single parent I know buys three prepped meals from a cafe a week, proper home cooked food, he just doesn’t cook it.

Does baby go to nursery? Wondering if you could maybe take an afternoon off work while the kids are at school and spend it batch booking?
I know jarred sauces aren't ideal but i batch cook a curry and a sweet and sour chicken for my daughter for the night she doesn't eat with us, i chuck in loads of frozen peas and sweetcorn so it's good on the veg side. It's portioned in to individual pots, when needed blast in the microwave. If pressed for time I'll pair it with microwave chips, if i have time I'll cook her some rice.