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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:
parentalhelpline · 08/12/2020 13:32

I think I would pay quite good money to someone who could take all our food preferences and present me with weekly recipes and shopping lists. I could specify that I wanted meals that could be tweaked for those wanting to lose weight but still feed hungry teenage boys, meals that could be easily doubled for when we have visitors, meals on a tight budget, seasonal recipes so we have salads in summer and casseroles in winter. I'm perfectly capable of shopping and cooking but I would be truly happy if I never had to think about what we were going to eat ever again.

That's all I need: a set of recipes and a shopping list tweaked for my local supermarkets, preferably in ingredient order. Because another 5 years of this will finish me off.

Anyone up for it? Grin

BarbaraofSeville · 08/12/2020 13:39

A suggestion for all of you who like the idea of Hello Fresh or Gousto, but find it too expensive or dislike the 'teaspoon of curry powder in a plastic tub' aspect.

Just about all the supermarkets publish recipes on their website. Next to the recipe is an 'add ingredients to shopping list for online shopping button'.

Gather round your brood, look at the recipe section of the supermarket website. Pick some meals that you will all eat (easier said than done, I know), click the 'add ingredients to shopping list' link. Remove the items you already have, swap brands due to preferences/budget. When sufficient dinners for the week have been added, add milk, washing powder etc etc and buy.

If any of the fussy sods refuse to eat X, Y or Z because they no longer want or like it, just ignore them and throw some toast at them if you really must.

theneverendinglaundry · 08/12/2020 14:36

Yes yes yes.

I'm so fed up with trying to feed everyone proper food every single sodding day of my life.

How do people actually cook every day? By the time I've picked the kids up, I've clocked around 10km on my fitbit and am absolutely shattered.

Interested in this thread?

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General food
TheHoneyBadger · 08/12/2020 14:37

@Catmads

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. Hmm

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!

This is so my mother's cooking! Put mashed potatoes on top and bake in the oven and you have the "tuna casserole" of my childhood.
ArabellaPilkington · 08/12/2020 14:49

Reflecting, I probably enjoyed the first 13- 15 years, it's the last few years it's become a bitch.

I love cooking, I love trying new stuff. I'm a more than competent cook.

17 years of it every fucking night is enough tho thanks.

As soon as the eldest raging carnivore goes to Uni we are going pescatarian.

Mushrooms on toast sounds heavenly.

Bearnecessity · 08/12/2020 15:41

I am the same as you Arabella except my raging carnivore is living at home for the next four years while doing Uni from home and who knows beyond..love him to pieces but I could quite happily live off something on toast or a salad....how large families do it I have no idea....after 18+ years I am properly over it...

DazzlePaintedBattlePants · 08/12/2020 15:43

Bearnecessity if your DC were at Uni physically they’d be doing their own damn cooking. Time to recreate that essential Uni experience at home...

NorbertMeubles · 08/12/2020 15:51

I could have written this OP, I am so seriously sick and tired of meal planning, shopping for the ingredients, making the fucking stuff, dishing it up, tidying up etc. It's the most unappreciated job. I hate it so much. I try so hard to think of new ideas and recipes but they all just go down like a shit sandwich so I hate it beyond belief. Actually relieved that I'm not the only one to feel like this. If I lived on my own I'd eat peanut butter and jam on toast every day and some times I'd mix it up by having a bowl of cereal or beans.

Bearnecessity · 08/12/2020 16:05

I hear you Dazzle he does work full-time and do a degree on the side...I try to help him out...but he could definately knock out the odd meal for himself.

DazzlePaintedBattlePants · 08/12/2020 16:09

Can I commend instant ramen to the house? Whack in some token veggies and a boiled egg and job’s a good’un. Unfortunately you might exceed your weekly sodium allowance in one meal though.

Skipsurvey · 08/12/2020 16:12

@CandidaAlbicans2
, it was delicious - although i didnt bother with flour and yoghurt, because i didnt see the point, but i guess it made some sort of thickener.

allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/27018/prawn-curry-with-cauliflower-and-peas.aspx?fbclid=IwAR1ainYGodtcrQ_78u1yYLy9jRjp9zAatbvcnGtAAAnbk7BuMJyxhA_USp4

the previous week i had done roasted butter nut squash and roasted cauliflower curry, so i knew i liked the roasted cauliflower

IndecentFeminist · 08/12/2020 16:14

I have recently got both the big kids and dh to nominate a meal for the following week. We do it over dinner the day before the shop arrives so I can add things as needed.

It doesn't matter if it is dull like sausage and chips, or the same each week but they choose. So that is 3 fewer meals needed.

We then tend to always have a curry on a Friday, pizza/freezer food on Saturday and some form of roast on Sunday.

GinAtMerlottes · 08/12/2020 16:18

The bit that confuses me is that I cook from scratch for six people five nights a week and have done for about twenty years (Number of people has steadily increased over that time)..... and yet when I sit down on a Saturday to meal plan for the following week I cannot think of a single meal I have ever cooked. I stare blankly at the page vaguely groping for a memory, any memory, or just a single foodstuff I have prepared. I then ask DH desperately “Can you remember any dinner you’ve ever had here at home?” And he starts panicking and saying “erm, did we have a stir fry once? I think?”.

I do get there in the end but I think it’s the reason we rarely have the same meal twice.

tldr · 08/12/2020 16:30

@GinAtMerlottes

The bit that confuses me is that I cook from scratch for six people five nights a week and have done for about twenty years (Number of people has steadily increased over that time)..... and yet when I sit down on a Saturday to meal plan for the following week I cannot think of a single meal I have ever cooked. I stare blankly at the page vaguely groping for a memory, any memory, or just a single foodstuff I have prepared. I then ask DH desperately “Can you remember any dinner you’ve ever had here at home?” And he starts panicking and saying “erm, did we have a stir fry once? I think?”.

I do get there in the end but I think it’s the reason we rarely have the same meal twice.

For this same reason, I write my meal plans /shopping lists in a notebook, then they’re all there for me to flick through.

At other points, I’ve had lists of meals categorised by useful things like for if the kids are out, or if it’s a quick tea, or if it’s a more effort meal which I like enough to contemplate making maybe on a weekend but so I don’t accidentally put it on the plan for a week night.

PurpleMustang · 08/12/2020 16:56

Ok, so who wanted to murder their other half when they said "let's get a villa for holiday this year" that was a big fat no from me. Half of the joy of a holiday is the not having to think, shop or cook the food. I just turn up (like they do every damn day) and it is all done

Bearnecessity · 08/12/2020 17:02

Already on them Dazzle...ds adores them takes them to work every day ...can't start shoe horsing them in twice a day they have been an absolute saviour over the years usually as an inbetween meals filler...good shout tho' for the uninitiated.

Bearnecessity · 08/12/2020 17:02

Flaming auto correct

Cassimin · 08/12/2020 17:11

I feel your pain, I had my first child at 19, I’m 53 now and have still got 3 at home, youngest 13 with SEN. I also have everyone’s partners around on Sundays so when there no Covid it’s cooking for 10.
Have been doing full evening meals for 34 years. I used to love cooking but find it really boring now. I’ve just invented soup wednesdays so I can have an easy night.

Absy · 08/12/2020 17:20

I feel all of this so much. We have friends who rented self catering in the summer, but got a personal chef to come and cook and my MIL and I were both like “that is GENIUS”.

It’s the trying to think of something every night that does it for me, and my kids have now started saying that something is “yucky”. My cunning is plan is to get my children cooking as soon as they’re old enough and then that’s a few nights off a week

Sexnotgender · 08/12/2020 17:21

@PurpleMustang

Ok, so who wanted to murder their other half when they said "let's get a villa for holiday this year" that was a big fat no from me. Half of the joy of a holiday is the not having to think, shop or cook the food. I just turn up (like they do every damn day) and it is all done
Totally this.

Shall we do self catering? No we fucking shan’t! It’s just the same shit in a woefully under resourced kitchen!

MoonDelay · 08/12/2020 17:23

Me. Me, me, me!!!! I am completely and utterly fed up of the whole thing. Every person in this house is fussy as fuck and if I hear "what's for dinner" or "what are you/we having for dinner" "what should I get for dinner" my shoulders tense up and feel really irritated.

It's a sore point lol

AlwaysLatte · 08/12/2020 17:29

I hear you! find it a little bit easier to have a little bit of repetition (not too much, obvs!) so roast chicken Sunday then baked potato with leftover chicken in Caesar salad for lunch Monday, fish in the evening, veg meals Tues, Curry dishes on thurs and self assembly meal on Friday (either make pizzas, or tacos etc) and pancakes on Sunday morning. Then it's just a case of filling in the gaps. At least with a sort of framework I don't have to think too hard! Also I make a cooked lunch every day but usually I try to get inventive with leftovers (frittatas, soups etc),

user1494050295 · 08/12/2020 17:54

We signed up for hello fresh to get some new ideas. We now order every three weeks and stretch the meals out. It has given us about 5 new recipe ideas we use regularly and buy separately

sunset900 · 08/12/2020 17:59

Completely know what you mean, and being the only adult in the house can feel like you work in a 24hr cafe. I have got round the issue (to a point) by creating a spreadsheet of all the meals acceptable to all people in the house, with ingredients required against each meal. Every week I can then pick what I'm cooking and copy and paste the ingredients into a shopping list. Still planning but doesn't seem so arduous.

NightOwl19 · 08/12/2020 17:59

I have found my people!!!

I have been having this same issue for years now!! I'm almost 31 weeks pregnant and just dont the patience for it anymore.

I have DC and SDC and someone was always moaning I don't like this, I don't want that. DP can never decide, I can never decide so now I cook one meal and that's the only option. Even deciding that is a chore tbh. I have been debaiting with buying some Pyrex freezer containers and making up meals for the freezer as a go to can't be bother dinners but then it's think about what is best to make and freeze so I give up

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