To find preparing 3 meals a day an absolute grind

Having children has made me fall completely out of love with food and cooking. I look forward to it returning one day when they are all more independent.

The only way I don't poke my own eyes out with spoons it to share the load. My husband does as much cooking as possible. My 10 year old makes his own breakfast lunch and snacks. My younger two are learning but still need supervising. My middle has additional needs and has rigid food preferences so that can be very very exhausting.

I would just make it all as easy as possible. Get everyone pitching in. It is boring and thankless.

@Bobbinwinding can you meal prep frozen meals for you and the veggie so there is more variety through the week then just give the fussy one whatever basic meals they will eat? - or vice versa meal prep for the fussy one

This is good advice.

Stop thinking in terms of meals but rather in terms of “food.” Have bread, cheese, crudite, fruit on hand, plus some baked chicken breast or something for meat eaters. People can make a sandwich, salad or whatever. Microwave jacket potatoes or tinned baked beans.

Have a family dinner on weekends.

Try this scenario for a month & see if you like it.

I’m in a very similar position OP so just want to send solidarity.
My only real advice is to tune out a lot of the noise around UPF and everything else that gets pushed at us in a guilt-inducing manner. I’ll explain to my kids why certain foods are better for us than others then let them make the choice. A lot of raw veg gets eaten as it’s all one of them will eat (veg wise) and I figure raw carrot and apple is actually really healthy so heck, it’s fine.
Not an option for everyone, but we do eat out and get takeaways a fair bit, as it keeps me sane.

Personally I'd plate up for them, cuts down on washing up and cuts down waste and ensures better nutrition- most kids are never going to take vegetables.
I agree about breakfast and lunch- definitely go for school meals if you can, they will appreciate home cooked meals all the more. I'd recommend a student cook book- easy , cheap and most likely to be liked by kids. work up about 10 recipes and do them in rotation- it will be like autopilot after a while , and ill also help in compiling your shopping list. Have the kids laying the table putting out condiments and DH can handle the washing up/dishwasher (I also get mine to do the veg prep- they tend to be good at things involving knives.)

My partner doesn't cook ever. Basically he's a lazy twat and it gives me intense rage. So what I do is I just cook the things I really love. He can eat it or not. If I'm away for any reason I leave him to it, I don't leave him anything cooked and I don't do a supermarket shop. If he gets scurvy I don't care. Now I'm not suggesting anything quite so drastic OP, but why don't you ask each one if them to cook one night a week? That reduces your contribution by 3 nights straight off.

Breakfast in our house is toast or porridge with a choice of spreads, fruit,and a drink. Each person gets their own.

Lunch, there are cheese, pate, pork pie, smoked mackeral and home made soup in the fridge. . Bread, salads. Each gets their own.

If they can both eat omelettes, pasta, and bread (pizza), that gives you dozens of easily adaptable choices. I'd make and freeze portions of different pasta sauces. You could make a stack of pizza bases and encourage them to do their own toppings.

Fussy husband eats what you've cooked or does his own.

They are all too dependent on you and it’s not helping anyone.

Regular breakfast things out on the table every morning for them to help themselves.

This doesn’t always have to be you and it would be good to get one of the DC to help (perhaps take it in turns) so they get into a habit of it and ready to take over.

School lunches instead of packed lunch.

If it really has to be packed lunches then make them up the night before, again do this around the table and have them involved.

Dinners on a rotation. Selection of dishes (eg vegetables, rice, protein) and wouldn’t put food on the plate for them at all, serving dishes and let them help themselves.

Your DH needs to be taking over some leadership of these things, many alternate days or swap between meals.

Saw you posted a few months ago so hope some things have already helped and you haven’t kept going as you were!

Why are you doing 3 a day? Are they not at school or nursery? Breakfast cereal or toast. Are the DC old enough to start doing a meal each? Get a takeaway or ‘Cook’ one night

I sympathize and find the grind awful. I don’t do more than five evening meals a week. And two will be v simple. DC started cooking 13-14

Women are exhausted because their fucking lazy OHs don’t take on 50% of the load. This DH is a husband and father first and because he’s a ‘workaholic’ seems to think that’s a get out of parenting. Also why is ANYONE in this household getting away with not clearing up? You don’t need a uterus to scrape plates and bung them in the dishwasher. Time to go on strike op!

Thank you. These threads make me so bloody depressed. I wonder if women will ever move out of the 1950’s housewife mindset. And they’re modelling the same crap to the next generation.

“Because they’d all starve.” No actually I think you’d find that they wouldn’t.

It's just relentless

I agree. It is a pain.

Ask? I would be telling. You have some rights too you know and one of those is not to be a slave. This will otherwise go on forever.

I was thinking about this thread earlier. I used to judge my mum and my mother in law who both spend a fortune in Waitrose on those posh ready meals for 2.

after 13 years of cooking every single meal and the mind numbing boredom of meal planning I now get whey they do it!

Can you put aside an evening as a family to all find 14 recipes which everyone can eat? Then you've got a fortnight's meal plan.

When you get near the end of the second time through it, put aside an evening to all work together on making up a third week of meals. Keep adding an extra week to the cycle until you have several weeks.

This shares responsibility and vastly reduces the mental effort required each day.

Ps, as for your DH. I would be telling him that he either eats with the family or he makes his own evening meal. My husband went through a stage of not fancying what I cooked a few years ago when our son had just reached toddlerhood, but it soon stopped when he had to come home from work and cook for himself every evening. He will still occasionally want something different which is fine, as he makes it himself. I only cook once and even that is once too many for me some days with a 4 year old 😂

I only have a 4 year old so I haven’t had to deal with Vegetarian or Restricted Diet, but if it were me i would do the following:

Breakfast - they can make themselves, my 4 year old gets his own breakfast (cereal, yoghurt and fruit, porridge, toast). Me or my DH will obviously cook the toast and make the porridge but our son will get the bread and whatever he wants spread on it, he will put the oats in his bowl and get the milk from the fridge for it, we just heat it up basically. He then spreads his butter or peanut butter etc on his toast. Same as cereal, he pours it all himself and gets what fruit he wants and cuts it with his toddler safe knives.

Lunch - Choose one thing to make for the week and adapt it to their diets. Say wraps, you and your husband might have chicken and cheese salad wraps, make the same for the Veggie but take out the chicken.

Dinner - Again everyone has the same, just take the meat out for the Veggie. Spag Bol is an easy one make it with lentils in one pan, fry off the mince for you a DH in a seperate one. Lentils only goes on Veggie plate, mince gets mixed in with the lentils for the rest of you. I’m not a huge meat lover myself so I often have my meal without the meat on it. Roast dinner is a prime example, I’ll have everything just not the meat if I don’t fancy it but I won’t cook something separately for me as I cba!

Not sure about the restrictive diet as to whether it’s allergy based, fussy eating based or something else entirely but again with that if it’s allergy based just remove the allergen before cooking or if was say dairy, you can make a chicken wrap without the cheese for that kid. It wouldn’t take 10 seconds to not add it in. If it’s fussy eating then I would personally just serve whatever you and DH/veggie are eating and be done with it. They can eat one of the options or choose not too have anything. If it’s something else entirely where neither of those apply like Afrid (think that’s what it’s called), I think i would go down the batch cooking route for that kid. List a few meals they will eat and batch cook them once or twice a month so you can just freeze and defrost/reheat them. That way you don’t have to worry about doing it on the day.

You have my sympathy OP, it’s absolutely bloody exhausting. It’s the mental load more than anything, even if breakfast is ‘just toast, cereal, fruit etc’ it’s remembering to have enough of everything, has the fruit gone bad, did someone use more ham then normal because of extra packed lunches…and the ‘I DON’T LIKE THIS’

Also I may just be a terrible mother but my DC aged 8+6 do not get their own breakfasts because they would be glacially slow and muck around. I am struggling to get out of the door as it is and I think it would finish me off.

I am appalled about your DH rejecting plated up food. It’s a terrible example to show to the children about how one responds to the effort and energy of another - and it’s a waste of food (or worse, it goes into the fridge covered in clingfilm and you feel YOU need to eat it for the lunch the next day when it’s no longer at its best and you probably fancied a nice salad or something). I would get a stack of Cook meals for when Mr Important Man Job feels like eating and take him out of the equation altogether.

Mine are very little, I'm vegetarian, my husband is neurodivergent and only eats a few vegetables. DS4 is a good eater but prefers vegetarian and DD3 is picky picky and would live on cream cheese and crackers if I let her.

Breakfast I have engineered a method that they can do themselves - even at 3 and 4 yogurt and fruit, for hungrier children add an easy carb like a brioche roll.

Lunch we make at the same time I (or DH) make dinner so it feels like we are only cooking once, it's purely psychological but its really easy to put together lunch boxes while the pasta boils for example.

Dinner we make sure that everyone has at least a protein that they like and I serve all our veg in the middle of the table "family style" with at least 3 veg options so there is a choice, sauces can also be done separately if that's an issue.

For one pot things like curry I just use the veg that everyone likes.

I do a salad bowl with most dinners too so the little one can for example pick out just the cucumber

Basically we just make sure that everyone has something that they will eat, what they then choose to eat from what is offered is up to them

Completely relate to this. When I hear the words "I don't like this," it makes me want to hide in a dark room and scream! 😂

I thought I got it right last night. My ND dc was eating usual pasta with blended med veg sauce, but with tuna stirred through unblended (usually wouldn't eat the tuna). I thought I've cracked it, felt all proud of myself, a little smug even. Then cue the little one, who is usually better with chunks of things moaning, "I don't like the tuna bits!", and sat all cross looking. I ended up scraping the tuna off and hand feeding the pasta that I was assuring were just "cheesy", thank god dc ate it. I've also been known to shout "just pick it out!" I do my best to adapt meals we are having to suit both dc's tastes, but sometimes it gets so bloody trying doesn't it?!

There a bowl of raw carrots with everything in this house!