To rarely cook from scratch?

In the past people cooked from scratch when now they will be chauferring their children round to after school activities. It is a simple either or situation.

Unfortunately if you only eat processed food, you will encounter health problems. So I’d prioritise cooking healthy food over constantly cleaning or laundry.
some quick examples of meals I’ve had this week:
flatbreads with salad and falafel
baked sweet potato with a quick lentil chilli
stir fry (ready chopped) with tofu and soy sauce
mccain naked fries with peas and veggie sausages

I only buy food that scores well on the Yuka app.

I don’t really understand how families where both parents work full time manage at all to be honest. I do cook everything from scratch (including bread, pizzas, wraps, pittas, pesto, soups etc) but I only work 3 days a week and I don’t think it’d be possible without my 2 days to catch up with everything. So hats off to you and you are not a bad mum at all.

At the end of the day our kitchen looks like a bomb’s been dropped in it, I absolutely love cooking but it does create a lot of washing up!

One of my kids has possible ARFID so eats very little of what I cook. It’s a bit soul destroying but I persevere and luckily (randomly!) she loves fish so will often have toast with a tin of mackerel while the rest of us tuck into lasagne or risotto or curry or casserole…

I used to batch cook dinners at the weekends. So the freezer would be full of quick easy healthy meals for the weekdays. Zero cooking required

I get it and empathise. Ive had to cook convenience food when in survival mode too. But i found my health going down hill and then my son got very ill so I wanted to have as many nutrients in our food as possible. I stopped as much convenience food as possible and cooked as fresh as possible. As a busy working mom there are some hacks you can use - batch cooking for a few hours on a weekend then freezing saves a lot of time in the week. I always double up when cooking or make a bit batch to last a few days or freeze. There are some simple hacks such as creme fraiche and MS garlic and herb stock pots makes a great sauce for pasta. or creme fraiche and tomao puree (or tomato and herb stock pot) is another quick fresh sauce. Then cook the past and add the veg. Warburtons pitta pockets with a half sliced chicken breast, pineapple slice mayo and garlic and herb sauce is a quick meal with salad or wedges. I never buy chips anymore I buy a bag of spuds - slice them into wedges, oil and add seasoning and 20 mins in the air fryer and they are done. it doesnt take me very long to cook from scratch with the right hacks and with batch cooking. But if you wanted to do it, start by just introducing a few changes and start transitioning from convenience food to fresher.

I’m not sure if this will help but think about cutting down on the number of post school activities to help free you up a bit and then spending some of that time cooking from scratch, once or twice during the week, even ask the kids to help if they can. I did this when our kids were small (cut down on activities) and found it worked for everyone, I had more time and energy and the kids where less tired and settled.

When I was a lone parent with a full-time job batch cooking was an absolute life-saver for me. I'd cook up a big batch of chilli, ragu, roast veg pasta sauce, or curry at the weekend, have it for dinner that day and then portion and freeze the rest. The chilli was used for chilli con carne, tacos or burritos during the week. Ragu/pasta sauce for pasta, jacket potatoes and pasta bakes. Curry was, well, curry served with rice. Those were the meals I used when I knew there wouldn't be much time of an evening due to activities etc. As long as I'd got the main bit out of the freezer the in the morning I could get a home-cooked dinner on the table in 20min using one of those.

If I had a bit more time in the week then I'd do something like sausages/salmon/etc with mashed potatoes plus steamed veg but I'd cook and mash the whole bag of potatoes in one go and freeze what I didn't use. You just need a big enough pot - I have a deep and abiding love for my Ikea Hemlagad pot for this kind of thing. Souvlaki benefits from a bit of prep the night before but is quick to cook, as are meatballs and burgers. Stir-fries are quick, too, particularly if you buy pre-prepared veg mixes. And pizzas using plain naans or ciabatta went down very well and don't take too long provided you don't go overboard with the toppings.

And sometimes we'd have hotdogs and oven chips, chicken nuggets, supermarket tortellini, or fish and chips from the local chippy. I did the best I could but sometimes I was just too knackered and/or had too little time to do something elaborate. That's ok. My DCs are now adults and both of them are good cooks so I think I did enough to set them up with an appreciation of good, healthy food.

This isn’t true really though is it. I hate the whole ‘fed is best’ argument. Cooking from scratch doesn’t have to be complicated - someone up thread pointed out that baked potato with cheese is technically ‘from scratch’. I honestly think the damage we must do to our health eating convenience food most days will be enormous.

scrambled egg and toast; baked potatoes, cheese & salad; spaghetti with passata and Parmesan; chicken, wraps, veg & spices… There are loads more! It doesn’t have to be all home-baked bread and refined sugar free!

Honestly eating convenience food most nights is just laziness.

Same here. Im with you 💯 %

You aren't a bad mum, your children are being fed.

Cooking from scratch isn't as daunting as it seems though. You can use cooking hacks as well or quick meals. As others have said, batch cooking really helps. How old are the children? Can you get them involved in cooking? My grandson spends a lot of time with me and we travel together and he loves cooking. He just does it automatically now and gets his little stool out and just takes over on the hob! I do anything involving a knife. He gets stuff out of the pantry. It's a nice family activity and we freeze leftovers for another day.

I cook everything from scratch and don't eat UPFs. We often don't eat until 7pm by the time we have cooked, but it's ok as it's always weekends and holidays when schedules can be more relaxed.

Noodles and ramen are super quick to make as well so better for weekday meals. Such a quick and easy meal, healthy too. Quesadillas, fajitas, burritos, and such like also really quick and easy.

Cooking from scratch sounds really fancy but it doesn't have to be @Timberss . If you boil pasta and get some olive oil and parmesan you have cooked from scratch.
When you make an omelette you cook from scratch. Like my mum I have given raw vegetables to my kids; cauliflower, cucumber, cherry tomatoes carrot sticks, red peppar. They prefer raw to cooked which is fine. Peeled at home so cooked from scratch😅

I du t like cooking but getting whole foods in my kids means I do.
You can do one tray bakes pretty quickly and of course there’s batch cooking.
You can make a bolognese one night and the next night add some chili and kidney beans and serve with rice and it’s chili!
I fortunate that my kids would eat anything and love vegetables.

If your kids are fed, you’re not a bad mum. You’re doing your best and if that means convenience food, that’s fine.
You’re working, you’re tired, your kids are fed, you’re doing what you can. If that involves beans on toast or freezer teas more often than other people seem to, so what?

For a bit of perspective I think most families eat healthier than they did in the past. There was no talk of 5 fruit and veg a day in the 70’s/80’s! I am similar to you but i try to chop up some fresh veg for us all to eat through the day. I choose quite good quality convenience food like the breaded chicken steaks from M&S, fresh tomato sauce, pasta with a salad. I am ND so get bored very quickly. On a good week i can cook most nights and then it will flip. I don’t feel bad tbh, i get zero support and juggling SEND landscape, work and all the life laundry. As long as you aim for decent quality and include some fruit and veg i think its fine.

I had a microwave meal from Asda tonight because it's been a mad day, was supposed to do the weekly shop but didn't get to the supermarket till 9 and just wasn't in the right headspace to plan a meal and cook. I popped in a a steam in the bag veg portion to go with it. I checked the ingredients of the microwave meal as the it was in the microwave. It wasn't even bad. There was nothing in it that I wouldn't use to cook a meal from scratch at home. With the extra bag of veg, it turned out to be a pretty healthy and nutritious meal. If I hadn't checked the ingredients I'd be feeling guilty and like I'd just ate crap. So, not everything you eat needs to mean spending ages prepping and cooking, just a quick scan of ingredients and some precut veg is an easy win.

Agree that "from scratch" means different things to different people. A baked potato with cheese is technically "from scratch" and natural.

I also hate cooking, so i live on
baked potatoes
sausage mash and beans (freeze mash portions with added cream)
scrambled eggs on nice toast
pesto pasta
pasta with mushrooms, garlic (or garlic salt for extra laziness) and philly stirred through (you can freeze portion of philly)

add in frozen veggies (meditterranean or bog standard) to the above and hey presto

I've being doing it 30 years too, but not quickly. Even a 20 min recipe seems to take me an hour.

I can’t think of anything l loathe more than cooking. I hate it.

I use pre prepared stuff a lot. The tedium of chopping and stirring makes me want to scream. And l hate the taste of frozen peppers and onions so can’t use them.

How old are dcs? They could help with some batch cooking?

The obvious question is what sort of stuff are you feeding them?

I read 'Ultra Processed People' and that was a giant kick up the backside!! Really, really eye-opening! I still don't actually properly cook too often. It's healthier food but pretty instant - eggs, avocado, cottage cheese, bagged salad, homemade bread (the breadmaker does all the work!), proper yoghurt, lots of fruit etc. When I do cook I freeze at least one extra portion and use a lot of pre-prepared frozen veggies, which really does save significant time.

I think you’re doing just fine x

@intrepidpanda. It’s perfectly possible to get healthy meals cooked in under 30 minutes, look online at Jamie Oliver’s website, huge amounts of recipes, I get in about 5.20pm and at the latest we are eating at 6pm, it’s mostly practice plus choosing quick cook food, and 95% of what we eat is scratch cooked. Today I made anchovy pasta which took under 20 minutes including homemade garlic bread (I didn’t make the bread I admit, that’s takes 3 hours!) but I’ve been doing this for 30 years

I hate cooking, work ft and rarely cook from scratch. We tend to eat a lot of very basic food.. jacket potatoes, beans on toast, omelettes etc. Probably not the best but something has to give.

I would prioritise cooking over tidying myself. Batch cooking really is a huge time saver so I would suggest doing this so on the busiest days you can get these out for dinner, far better and cheaper than ready meals. There’s a programme on called the batch lady (I think) to get ideas (recipes are probably online). It’s also really about working out which short cuts are worth it and which aren’t eh we all use canned tomatoes, but I wouldn’t use ready made sauces normally.