Did your mum stop cooking when your dad left?

I cooked for years and for a lot of those years I enjoyed it.
I gradually got bored of it, drudgery every single night, so I stopped, under the guise of dieting, my husband gets his own food now, and so do I drudgery over!

I'm so sorry for your loss xx

I spent over 20 years cooking for my kids, now they've moved out I love not having to cook 'proper' meals everyday! I still do a sunday roast & feed whoever turns up but if its just me I enjoy the leftovers for a couple of days as it means I get a few more days off from cooking lol

I go through phases of cooking and baking and then being burned out and not doing anything.

Sourdough bread, pastries, fermented foods, cakes, puddings, all kinds of things. Sometimes I will eat a crisp sandwich.

DB / SIL split up and since then SIL doesn’t cook at all. Her and the DC eat out a lot, and the DC use deliveroo a lot too. It’s very odd going round there, lovely house, lovey kitchen - which has no food in and is only used to socialise!

There was more convenience food definitely which I made myself. I do remember her still cooking sometimes but I think that was when she had another boyfriend.

Lots of other stuff stopped though instantly. We never had breakfast together, I never had another birthday party or even acknowledgement, I had no proper bedtime, I was left alone many nights while my sister babysat the same age child next door - the parents said I was welcome too but my sister said no and my mum went along with it, I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and realised I was all alone, my older brother's friends were constantly in the house drunk and smoking, I couldn't do my homework as the place was always so noisy.

If I sound bitter it's because I am. My mum thinks to this day that I am upset she left my dad but I'm not. I'm upset she stopped being my mum.

Kind of, when my Dad left there was more stuffed pasta and ready made lattice pie, when my brother left for uni it was lots of ready made meals from Marks and sometimes Waitrose which I was happy about but still loads of fruit to eat.

This has taken me back in time - the Dark Ages, before the invention of those Findus pancakes! My mother got us fed, through her misery, with Vesta curry. Fray Bentos pies. Frozen peas. On repeat until the arrival of boil-in-the-bag fish. I quite like all of the above 😁

I'm not sure how the reasonable / unreasonable fits into this so I won't vote, but, when my husband passed away I stopped cooking for myself.
Very occasionally I will make a large pot of stew or a large pot of chili or a large casserole and that is all I will eat for the entire week until it is gone,
I don't even care if it's fully heated up.
I don't eat at the dining table, I usually eat standing up by the counter,
it just doesn't feel like a meal.
It doesn't feel like a homey enjoyment signaling the conclusion of the workday,
a shared meal with a loved one...
It's just enough nutritious sustenance so I can keep going for another day.
More likely than not the only time I will cook anything will be when I have family/friends coming for a dinner.
Otherwise, a bowl of cereal is fine for dinner.
Sad thing is, I used to really love to cook, I made everything from scratch, it took hours, but I really enjoyed doing it.
I do cook for others, and when they enjoy it, that gives me happiness.

Mum and dad split up in the late 60s. At the time, mum was very clear about the fact that she would never again need to have dinner on the table at 6pm.

Meals definitely became more erratic, she still cooked, but only things she liked and nothing that took too long.

When our local supermarket started cooking roast chickens, I think that was pretty much the death of roast at home. Mum was completely over the drudgery of cooking. By the early 70s, there weren’t the choice that we have today, but I’m pretty sure we ate more take away than the average family.

My mum was not inclined to cook meals, she could bake very well but not meals. It was nearly always an oven meal and as a kid I really couldn't stand any of it, smelt like dog food to me especially those crispy pancakes so I frequently went hungry and survived on cereal, marmite sandwiches and fruit.

My nan taught me how to cook, she used to feed me up when I stayed with her.

I could quite happily live on sandwiches now tbh, porridge, sandwiches and tea.

My kids are now at uni and I cook very little. DH will make us an omelette sometimes or we will eat a sandwich. Sometimes I’ll put salmon in the air fryer or a jacket potato in the oven but I am SO bored of thinking about meals I’m not doing it any more when the kids are away.

it means when they do come back from uni I’m happy to cook as I’ve had the first break from it in over TWENTY years

Thanks for the reminder about findus crispy pancakes! Cheese ones were the best, then chicken and bacon. Always gutting to discover they were mince ones 🤮. Staples in our house late 80s / early 90s. One parent house. Very few home cooked meals.

No because I used to make a 3 course fancy meal to appease my ex. I was also a food influencer (I worked with Tesco/waitrose/asda etc) but I went into survival mode as I had a severely disabled son. Both kids eat anything and everything. We’ve moved on from that time and now our kids love cooking the fancy meals!

Because your kids didn't like fancy food?

Isn't it so bizarre how naturally women fall into this, usually without even being asked. When I was married it was my natural inclination. I'm divorced now and really enjoy cooking whatever the fuck I like for me and DC. No ready meal shit here, I've gone the opposite way and do full elaborate meals. DC loves my cooking and I always make sure I give myself a little twist to dishes that Ex H would have turned his nose up at.

When I became a single mum I cooked for the kids but nothing fancy like I used to do

When I became a lone parent I carried on doing a cooked dinner every night. Once my DCs grew up and moved out I've got a lot bit more lax. I still batch-cook stews, chilli, pasta sauces etc and put them in the freezer but quite often I can't really be arsed and so end up have scrambled egg on toast, a jacket potato or just whatever I can find in the fridge plus some salad.

I think that's really harsh on your mother.

I was widowed. You have no idea what it takes to keep on getting up and make sure DC are clothed, fed, etc. The emotional burden of suddenly being all they have. It's much harder than "just" the amount of physical work required.

And then you hold things together enough to make the effort to have a homecooked family dinner, and they either announce they're not hungry, refuse to eat it or can't wait to get down from the table.

This thread is making me so sad. I cook for my children, not my husband!

My dad moved abroad for work when I was a teen, and my mum stayed behind. When he lived with us we had a range of proper meals cooked from scratch ( my mum is an excellent cook.) when he moved away We had a LOT of breaded chicken or fish with boiled potatoes and peas. It was very noticeable.

Also my mum ( who had a flexible contractor type role), stopped working. She used to work probably 2 days a week, but when my dad moved and he increased her ‘house keeping’, she stopped working altogether, on the quiet. After I had finished my exams, she went out to join him, and I discovered years later that he compensated her for not being able to do her job abroad, and he probably wasn’t aware that she had silently quit 2 years before. I didn’t join up all the dots for a long time.

If DH left or died I would continue to cook our usual dinners, roasts, curries, bolognese etc for our teenagers. If it was just me on my own, no cooking , be happy with a sandwich.

My parents didn’t split but I split with my exh and I continued to cook homemade dinners as I always had. But the nights they were at their dads and it was just me I had toast.

Maybe she doesn't like stew?