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Original poster

So fucking bored of meal planning!

223 replies

bingowingsmcgee · 05/12/2020 23:42

Anyone else just find the whole meal-making thing deadly dull?! I am so bored of thinking about food, shopping for food, preparing food... Wish I could find some joy in it, but it just feels Neverending. Anyone else?

OP posts:
CatrinVennastin · 08/12/2020 07:30

I have found my people.

I am mumsnetting instead of finishing my online shop.

I have a west of Scotland male and two fussy DD’s to cook for. DH hates pasta unless it’s macaroni cheese. One DD would like to be veggie until I pointed out that she doesn’t actually eat any vegetables except peas.

Cooking/meal planning is just dull as fuck.

I could live on soup and a sandwich but to the west of Scotland male that’s just a “wee lunch”.

I reckon I have about ten more years of this drudgery to go. DH likes to cook at the weekends though. Must involve eleventy billion ingredients and every pot in the house.

mollscroll · 08/12/2020 07:30

So true. I used to love cooking. Now I hate it. Chop chop fucking chop.

Gousto helped a bit because I didn’t have to think or go to the shops as much.

BookShark · 08/12/2020 07:31

I've just bought myself a new planner for next year which has a six week meal planner in the back - idea being that you plan six weeks, and then just recycle those six weeks through the year. So it means an upfront effort, but then no thinking about it after that.

No idea if it'll work out if my family will pick up on what I'm doing, but if it does, that's a huge mental weight lifted.

Interested in this thread?

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General food
Skipsurvey · 08/12/2020 07:32

saturday we had roasted cauliflower and prawn curry, sunday we had good old favourite lentil spaghetti,with bacon on the side for those who eat meal and yesterday we had Caribbean rice and beans.
apart from the lentil spag bol, i just search for whatever ingredients i have in but often my searching is too time consuming.

Original poster
bingowingsmcgee · 08/12/2020 07:33

Oh these replies are balm to my soul. It's comforting to know it's not just me who feels like they're going mad. I've decided that I will always have an enormous supply of barmcakes and fillings and that forever more, lunch shall = baps. That at least murders every single lunch until the sweet release of death 😂

OP posts:
DazzlePaintedBattlePants · 08/12/2020 07:33

No second choices here, other than egg on toast or weetabix. Kids get a hot meal at school so they won’t waste away.

Picky/snack tea is also a valid option. Nowt wrong with cheese and crackers for tea!

I embrace the dullness because dull is easier than thinking about it!

mizu · 08/12/2020 07:34

Oh I'm with you. I'm not even very good at it. DH (who doesn't cook and works different shifts each week) and 2 teens. Both of us work full time. Me as a teacher. The last thing I want to do when I get home is cook.

We usually have: spag Bol; prawns and noodles; jackets with the left over spag Bol; pasta and salmon; curry all with veg - and repeat perhaps in a slightly different pattern Grin

We had our 1st deliveroo over lockdown 1 and it was bliss.

I am looking forward to minimal cooking...........

Original poster
bingowingsmcgee · 08/12/2020 07:35

And isn't "what are we having for tea?" just the most pass agg question ever?

OP posts:
Sexnotgender · 08/12/2020 07:35

I’ve found my people. I’m literally lying in my hospital bed looking at the meal plan for the week thinking I should probably pop to Lidl on the way home if I get out today. What a pile of shite.

Member · 08/12/2020 07:38

Yip. Got a veggie who’ll happily eat Quorn etc but hates anything with merest hint of spice and another who’ll eat Quorn mince but not the chicken. I’ve just had an ultrasound for abdominal pain & have gallstones AND a fatty liver. The latter means I need to lose weight & cutting carbs is the best route but am also supposed to be low fat for the gallstones. I’m just tired of trying to come up with ideas!

frolicmum · 08/12/2020 07:42

Our weekly plan just in case anyone needs inspo:

Monday - homemade burgers with homemade chips (mine are veggie, DHs are meat).
Tuesday -

shehadsomuchpotential · 08/12/2020 07:43

I hear ya. There seems to be more pressure on providing food for enjoyment and being fully stocked at the moment.

I had to sit in car and rally myself to go in the supermarket at the weekend!

thistimelastweek · 08/12/2020 07:45

My answer to "what are we having for tea?" is " wait and see pie".

Chasingsquirrels · 08/12/2020 07:48

@joystir59

It's why most women can't stand cooking in later life!
When my dad retired (aged 48! having done his 30 years in the police) my mum said she'd been shopping and cooking for the family for nearly 30 years - and it was his turn now. My dad took it over and has shopped and cooked ever since. My mum bakes, so all the desserts are down to her, and I think she often makes lunches, but all of the main meals are made by my dad. My mum retired about 18 years ago, but they haven't changed. They are now approaching that 30 year mark, and she said recently that actually her 30 years had involved cooking for 4 of us for a good proportion of it, so he needed to do more like 40 to match it 🤣.

We go over there nearly every Sunday evening for a roast which my dad cooks while my mum sits and chats to us, and yet my kids, who are teens and have never known anything different in their grandparents house, STILL refer to "Grandad's roast potatoes".

BefuddledPerson · 08/12/2020 07:49

My damascene moment came when I stopped trying to make it amazing every day.

We eat really well in this house, mostly old favourites with a few novelties.

Stop buying into the whole food industry, go back to basics, make it easy on yourself.

If you'd eaten the way we eat 150 years ago you would be living like a king. Our expectations are too high!

Focus on nutrition and good taste. Everything else is bollocks.

Peaseblossom22 · 08/12/2020 07:50

I do agree , I loathe cooking now, it is rare that by 9.30am I have not been asked ‘what’s for dinner?’. The constant round of cooking ,planing and eating food which I don’t want to eat myself is exhausting

TheDuchessofDukeStreet · 08/12/2020 07:52

I’ve found my people too. It’s the mental load. My DP has many lovely qualities but if I ask for suggestions, answer comes there none. It’s laziness. So I’m going to stop asking and serve what there is or what I’d like. I’m happy to cook, but the planning, urgh!

UncleBunclesHouse · 08/12/2020 07:52

So happy to see this thread. I don’t even do the cooking and I sodding hate thinking about what to eat, buying it, managing the fridge, failing to meal plan every bloody week so stuff goes out of date then I feel bad or it gets to 7.30pm and it’s like oh look we have nothing to eat. I’d love a lifetime subscription to a meal service, or a husband that not only cooked it but took all the associated mental work too!

RandomMess · 08/12/2020 07:52

I cooked for the first 10 years, DH the following 10 years I really need to step up and do my share 😭

It's funny how much more appreciative DH became when I cooked after he took over shopping and cooking!!!

BarbaraofSeville · 08/12/2020 07:52

Seriously, why are people tying themselves in knots after teens and grown adults like this?

If they don't cook, they don't get a say, end of. Make pasta, have cheese and crackers, mushrooms on toast etc if that's what you want.

If you do feel obliged to feed them for some reason, just say 'I'm making mushrooms on toast, do you want some' and they say yes or no. Fuck cooking food you don't want to eat for people who won't reciprocate.

bettyskitchen · 08/12/2020 07:53

I love cooking but fml it’s draining sometimes. Would happily have a bowl of cereal for dinner one night a week.

Got fed up of DP responding to my “what do you fancy for dinner” meal planning question with “I don’t mind” that I flipped and we now meal plan a week each.

This week I’ve made a spanakopita for lunches with salad.
Dinners are chilli and jackets, sausage casserole (will last two meals), mushroom pasta, prawn curry.

Big fan of one pot / roasting tin meals, I’m pescatarian but luckily DP isn’t fussed about not eating meat at home.

RedRec · 08/12/2020 07:54

Oh I love this. My children are 19 and 16 now (oldest at uni) and so it is getting easier.
Left to my own devices I could live on toast and marmite, shaking it up a bit sometimes with tomatoes, mushrooms and eggs.

Ragwort · 08/12/2020 07:54

So agree that it's utterly tedious and boring.

I am over 60 and have been cooking meals forever, loathe the expression 'cook from scratch' - I am more than happy with cheese and crackers.

My DPs are 87 & 90 and my lovely mum still cooks from scratch most nights, she too is utterly fed up with it but feels 'duty bound' to cook fresh meals - even though they could easily afford M & S, Waitrose ready meals etc.

Chasingsquirrels · 08/12/2020 07:55

Arggggh, massive fail there, the kids refer to "GrandMA's roast potatoes" (despite my dad always doing the cooking).

LaVitaPuoEsserePiuBella · 08/12/2020 07:56

@PurpleMustang

Oh God it gets so tedious!! May have to be a New Year aim now but have seen super organised people have a set of lollipop sticks that they write meals on, on the reverse where the recipe is, how long it takes. Then colour code the stick ie red is beef, yellow is chicken then they pick random from the pot. This is my goal. Pinch of Nom books are good for new recipes. Also going to buy a slow cooker to try that.
Good grief 😮 What kind of planet do these people live on?! I've never heard of this.... just open a recipe book at random....