So fucking bored of meal planning!

[bingowingsmcgee]

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?

Sillylittlebisucuit i need to do something like this.

Is it set so like Wed week 1 is always lasagne?
It must make food shopping easier? Fo you just get the weeks plan out?

What happens if you dont feel like whatever it is that night or you end up eating elsewhere or you have leftovers....

Sorry if theyre silly questions (Inneed someone who meal plans to do an AMA).

Also if you buy day a punnet of tomatoes/extra anything and only need them for one meal - you cant save them for 3 weeks til it comes round again?

One of mine is a tin of condensed mushroom soup + tin of tuna + pasta + frozen peas. @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

I hear you, except I would get a face from one about the tuna and a face from the other about the peas.

I do tin of condensed mushroom soup, pasta, mushrooms and whatever needs using normally a packet of cooked chicken or ham close to it's use by or last week the other half packet of Herta hotdogs Dd didn't want worked surprisingly well!

@CandidaAlbicans2

I find meal planning is OK for a while when single, but such a chore when trying to cook for a family.

"I'll cook xyz"
"Oh, so and so doesn't like beans"
"OK, I'll cook abc"
"Ah, wotsit doesn't eat mushrooms"
"Oh FFS" 🙄😬😠

In this situation whilst I’m serving I’ll try and avoid beans for so and so and avoid the mushrooms for wotsit and they’ll be invited to pick out whatever I miss themselves. My days of catering for other people’s preferences are done.

(That said, when I’m meal planning, I make the family shout out what they want to eat. They each get a choice. Saves me thinking and then they can’t complain.)

Im ginna try that 3 weeks worth of meals idea and keeo them on my phone or in a notebook with shopping lists to reuse again as ilmy mind goes blank at the supermarket and always forget something!
Online shopping is difficult to grasp here due to lockdowns

'Meal planning'? My wife occasionally tries to get me to consider this but as I think this thread points out it reduces what should be a pleasurable and creative experience to being a drudge.

I don't meal plan. I just make sure I've got stuff to cook and wing it every day - quite often making things up as I go along with whatever is available.

Last night: Pepper soup (there were bags of sweet peppers reduced to pennies in Morrison's the other day so I grabbed them. Roasted, skinned and seeded with a couple of fried onions and some smoked paprika (a dollop of Lidl's Greek yoghurt in each bowl.) With bread rolls from the freezer which I bought in Morrisons a few weeks ago when there was a HUGE pile of them for pennies.

Followed by pasta penne with a pesto DD1 had made the previous day from some really needing eating bagged salad (from the reduced to clear section of our local Co-op), garlic, and olive oil (thank you, Jack Monroe) fried mushrooms (ditto Co-op) cheese and a green salad. (I think I paid full price for all the ingredients for that.)

Pudding - which no one got to because they were too full was to be an apple and blackberry crumble (surplus apples from neighbours tree and foraged brambles.) I left the crumble on the table and people ate it for breakfast.

I had no idea - apart from the crumble obviously,and I baked potatoes in the oven while it was on - what we were eating that night until I started cooking. I fed the whole family for less than a fiver. It's fun.

I bloody hate cooking nowadays...so tedious. Everyone likes different stuff and I find it a massive chore. Everyday dh texts me and asks "whats for tea". Today I am going to respond "dog muck sandwich"

@MoiraNotRuby
oh my god that’s so accurate

I have a housefull of men.DH and D'S's in their 20's who can all cook well but if i dont set down the rules they would all cook something for themselves when they feel like it so that there is cooking/eating going on all day and they can eat soooo much .I just wish they could eat bread and cheese and be happy. Off I go to Aldi now .The fridge is empty.

I used to hate it too, but about 10 years ago I insisted that it became a joint family effort ( 6 of us) so every Thursday all 6 us picked the meals for the following week, so a bit if give and take needed but life became so much easier and then I’d write the shopping list for the weekly shop.
We still do it, but now my DH is semi retired and very organised so he starts trying to get the planning done on Wednesday and does the weekly shop on Fridays.
The main difference now is that the cooking is shared too, as we are a large lockdown household of adults.
To all of you doing all the planning, cooking and shopping, just stop now and make the rest of the family take some responsibility for this never ending chore.

I have definitely found my people. So much harder since Covid as we're trying to stick with one large shop each week.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits please tell me more about Gousto.

We have 2 (hungry) teens so we would probably need 2 boxes for 2 each week, presumably that's easy to sort out.

Do you pick the recipes each week or will they just deliver 4 meals without any input from me?

Thanks

@bingowingsmcgee

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

Nope, DS's plaintive 'is there anything special planned for dinner' wins...

Wow I agree with this so much- dread Thursdays when I plan and online shop. Try to find new recipes but time to cook is limited and so can’t always do what I would like. I could use a list of really easy/ can’t be bothered/ don’t have time meals like the Tuna, mushroom soup one above! Dd doesn’t like eggs or beans so that rules out a lot of quicker meals.

It’s my least favourite part of the week. My DC are no help, if I ask them for ideas they just shrug and say they don’t know or ‘pizza’ (they’d eat it every night if I let them). DH also isn’t very much help, he will say he doesn’t fancy lots of things but when I ask for his ideas he doesn’t have any!

We tend to get stuck in a rut of eating the same meals every week because I know everyone will eat them.

I don't even have DC to cook for.

I'm so fucking over meal planning and cooking. I almost feel like I'd rather starve I realise I wouldn't in reality

I am pescatarian but I don't like salmon, so my diet is fairly carby.

DH is practically keto so lots of meat and salmon (his fave), veg and no carbs.

And last week he announced he wants us to eat meals we've cooked together so could I meal plan for that?

Cue me spending 45 mins trying to find any dishes that someone practically veggie and someone practically full on carnivore who won't eat carbs or cheese can eat together. What a fucking palaver.

First world problems indeed but I miss Pret so goddamn much.

I miss wandering into a Pret or wherever at lunch and just picking some pre-prepared stuff at random and then chucking the wrapper in the bin.

And I know it's first world problems and post-COVID we are beyond skint and I can't see us being able to 'grab and go' for the foreseeable future.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa 😭

@MoiraNotRuby

I'm jealous of the families who all eat the same! One of us is vegetarian but at least we no longer have DH on the bastarding keto diet, costing pounds and losing none.

🤣🤣🤣 👏🏻

I hate this too. It wouldn't be so bad if DC appreciated it, but the constant moaning just adds to the nightmare. I signed up for Gousto and for a few weeks all was good but now DC hate Gousto too! I'm looking forward to my DC having to cook for themselves and hope they will then realise how lucky they were.

Yes I hate meal planning, I don’t enjoy cooking much either. As a treat at the weekend I drove to a lovely farm shop that has prepared meals that you warm up in the oven/hob. I bought seven trays of different things to avoid meal planning. Just having one week off has given me a break. I can definitely recommend.... I’m making this one tonight with a side of vegetable fried rice

@carcarbinks

I hate this too. It wouldn't be so bad if DC appreciated it, but the constant moaning just adds to the nightmare. I signed up for Gousto and for a few weeks all was good but now DC hate Gousto too! I'm looking forward to my DC having to cook for themselves and hope they will then realise how lucky they were.

I'm 30 now and I love going to my mothers now because her food is diviiine, did not appreciate it a child but what do children really appreciate 😅 it will happen especially when they leave home.

I do love cooking though which helps a bit x

Have seemed to be cooking/planning/tempting fussy eaters for ever and ever! We have our friend who cooks for us at WE (he is part lodger/part chum) and I appreciate that .The rest of the time I seem to have regressed into my DM/DGM meal plan, as in if its Tuesday it must be Sausages sort of thing.Purple Mustang I love my Slow Cooker as well .So quick to do a Sausage Casserole /Coq Au vin /Pot Roast Beef .Loads of recipes for all day cooking or whatever.FREEDOM!

Oh OP thank you for starting this thread. It’s so fucking boring. They just want feeding All. The. Fucking. Time.

Covid makes it so much worse because everyone is just at home and needs to eat there ALL. The. Fucking. Time.

I have had a few weeks of no kids at home (mix of uni and boarding school) and the relief from the tyranny of cooking has been one of the best things thats happened to me in 20 years. And I thought I liked cooking- turns out i love making the odd twiddly thing just for me, but the relentless tedium of having to feed 4 teens, all with different likes and dislikes is soul destroying

@abitnotfit

I have definitely found my people. So much harder since Covid as we're trying to stick with one large shop each week.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits please tell me more about Gousto.

We have 2 (hungry) teens so we would probably need 2 boxes for 2 each week, presumably that's easy to sort out.

Do you pick the recipes each week or will they just deliver 4 meals without any input from me?

Thanks

You can do a 4 person box. You choose the recipes for up to four days a week. We’re veggie but find we have loads of choice each week. You can suspend individual weeks too. I can send you over a code for a discount if you want to give it a try.

@Rainallnight

Oh OP thank you for starting this thread. It’s so fucking boring. They just want feeding All. The. Fucking. Time.

Covid makes it so much worse because everyone is just at home and needs to eat there ALL. The. Fucking. Time.

😂

Totally this. Thinking about, planning, shopping, cooking every fucking morsel that every bugger eats for months and months on end is an absolute shower of shite.

Weirdly that hadn’t quite occurred to me but you’re right. I think the additional thinking required to produce lunch is what’s pushed me over the edge.

Ugh ugh ugh I hear you all. Its all dull as fuck

Two teens and a chilli obsessed DH here. Everyone likes different things but I mostly refuse to cook more than one thing

We've tried the teens cooking
We've tried Gousto etc (INSANE amount of washing up and packaging waste - if you have a decent store cupboard the individual sachets of soy and individual garlic cloves will make you weep)
We've tried asking them what all their faves are and there's very little correlation
We've tried new stuff - I generally try at least one new dish every few weeks. It's a rarely a success with all
Have the odd takeaway at this time of year

GOD ITS BORING

And the very thought of Christmas cooking is making me cower.