AIBU to not want to decide what’s for sodding dinner?

I would meal plan but my DH seems allergic to that level of organisation.
So, as he cooks, I buy a range of ingredients, suggest some options and leave him to it. If I cook, there's a few meals I make that I like 😄

love this

and dh makes me furious when i ALREADY have the rice on for example and says Not much for me!!

While I do get fed up of deciding every night I find the benefits outweigh the negatives:
I never ever wash up or clean the kitchen as I am only responsible for the cooking
We always eat something I want to eat

I find it easiest to sit down at the weekend and meal plan. It's a pain to do but then no need to think for the whole week.

So you just make what you want to eat/can be arsed making and if there are complaints, remind them that they said they didn't mind.

Anyone over about 10 can make themselves egg/beans on toast/cereal etc if they reject the meal that has been kindly cooked for them.

You should sit down as a family on a Sunday and make a meal plan and shopping list.

That way everyone knows what’s on the menu, they’ve helped choose it and you’re only buying what you need at shopping meaning you’re not spending or wasting as much.

You need to be clear and direct with your husband that he is to be in charge of making X amount of meals each week and to ask what it is he’d like on those nights for him to cook.

Can I ask a question please? I’m sure it’s absolutely obvious but how does having soup and salad work? I see it do often on mn and I don’t understand. Do you mean together, at the same time? Or one after the other? And if so, what order? And what sort of salad?

I feel like a total idiot asking this so please explain to me!

Used to drive me mad when asking Dh and he’d say “oh, just something simple” like he was being helpful. He has thankfully stopped that. Or, “it’s too early to decide” - no, someone has to make a decision now!!!

I do all the cooking in my house and honestly for a while I was like a short order cook, different meals for everyone's different diets and preferences. Now I have a loose rota based on the carb, as a PP said - so pasta one night, potato the next, then bread, then rice. So there's still room for interpretation but at least I have a starting point. And then I just cook whatever I want, but make sure there are components that everyone could have. E.g. even for spag bol I don't mix it together - there's a big bowl of buttered pasta, a bowl of meat sauce, a bowl of plain tomato sauce, salad, cheese, etc. I put it all on the table family style and everyone serves themselves (obviously I help the toddler). Everyone helps set and clear table. It sounds like faff but it's actually easier and works for us.

Just have beans on toast or something some nights! It doesn’t have to be a proper full on meal every night!

I got my teenagers to choose recipes they thought looked ok to cook. I bought the ingredients (the hardest bit, but baby steps etc) and left them to it. Immediate hit and very fancy dinners!

This to me is the absolute worst part of being an adult. My son has just moved into uni halls and it’s the one thing I don’t miss about him being gone. The only time he ever said anything , “what’s for dinner?”

Yep - it's proper shit but because l am home 30 seconds before everybody else, apparently it's my issue to sort outb
every night to infinity and beyond.

i’m happy to have the same thing every week for dinner but my DH and kids aren’t so I’m pretty clear that if they want different things it’s up to them to come up with it (kids are teens) and no moaning about it to me

I hate it too. It's hard enough deciding when it's just for me, but ten times more painful when needing to include others too.

And I've been fairly lucky. The people I need to decide for WILL just eat what's put in front of them without complaining, but it's still hard to decide what that should be

I really feel for those of you who are expected to decide when your family members really do have an opinion but just not voicing it, unless you fail to mind read and get it wrong!

Edited for typos

Surely you don't have to think about it from scratch every day? I (or dh) plan a week's meals at a time. Sometimes I swap a couple of days around, but apart from that I don't need to make daily decisions. We literally never ask 'What do you want for dinner?'.

Drives me batshit tbh . I try and plan 3 days at a time so I can get stuff in or defrost from the freezer. Doesn't always work but.....

As a kid I ate what I was given. There’s too much choice now!

Me and DH split the cooking for the week so I decide what I make and normally different things on rotation. What drives me insane is when it's his cooking day and he asks me what I fancy for dinner, urghhhh just make something (it's always the same things anyway ;)

God I hate it.

’I don’t mind’ isn’t you being flexible, it you making it my problem…!

I never asked when the children were young, not even exH.

I would only offer 3 suggestions when they were older and then I was out and they had to cook.

Anyone who didn't want what was cooked could have toast but there was no other choice. I couldn't afford choices.

Now I tend to cook like I still have 4 kids and an exH but I don't mind eating the same thing for 3/4 days, particularly as it saves on cooking etc. I've never manay to downsize the ingredients.

I agree with pps about having a weekly or fortnightly meal plan. When the kids were at school ours looked something like this:
Monday - pasta
Tuesday - chicken
Wednesday - fish (usually breaded)
Thursday - stir fry
Friday - chilli or other slow cooker option
Saturday - takeaway
Sunday - roast

It was loose enough that we had variety, but also gave us enough structure so that we weren’t having the endless “what shall we have for tea?” conversations.