How much time and effort do you spend on cooking?

[Starstruck2021]

I like nice food but I don’t particularly like cooking and find it a chore. Only me and one teenager at home and we like different things so that’s a pain too.

Sometimes I will just look in the fridge or freezer and make something quick and easy like pasta. When I make an effort to cook something like a slow cooker casserole we both enjoy it. I don’t know if I need inspiration or just need to stop being so lazy.

Is it the norm to cook a proper dinner every day? Do you find it a chore or do you enjoy it?

I enjoy cooking and cook from scratch every day whether I am at work or home.
Today’s dinner wasn’t visually appealing, egg fried vegetable rices wasn’t improved with red cabbage.
The man I am currently watching eat his tea is a bit puzzled by blue food

I hate the brain power involved but I also really like eating nice food. Every week I sit down with my recipe books and work out the following week’s meals, putting the ingredients straight into my Tesco order. There’s only the two of us so I cook double so that we each have a lunch for the next day. It takes roughly half an hour but worth it to not have to think about it every night.

I also use any spare time during the day to get ahead. So while my laptop is loading up in the morning I get out the ingredients and recipe book for that nights dinner. Then during the day while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil or lunch to heat up, I do any prep like chopping vegetables. Makes it a much less daunting task come the evening.

I enjoy cooking and try to do a new recipe every 10 days. We are mainly veggie and I meal plan for about 5 days in advance. Only 2 of us and I'm retired, so I have plenty of time. Hated cooking when dcs were small.

Surely most people cook a proper dinner most evenings but have a couple of "lazy" meals. For example, we have a baked potato evening and an omelette evening every week. The rest of the time we cook proper meals.

As little as possible. Hate it.

I used to enjoy cooking but the lack of enthusiasm (screaming fits) from the DC whenever I cook anything interesting has killed it for me.

I hate cooking. I can do it but I resent the time spent - even a 20min meal seems too much hassle... all thay effort and then it is just eaten and gone within minutes. some weeks I have enthusiasm but it never lasts long.

I really enjoy cooking. I don’t meal plan, but I buy the veg and meat we like and then work meals around what store cupboard stuff we have.

I hate cooking. We were househunting recently, and all these houses with huge kitchens were coming up and all I could think was that I spend a little time in the kitchen as possible, so it would be an her waste of space.

I enjoy cooking and like nice food, but hate faff. I’m always looking for shortcuts to make the whole thing easier
I have a repertoire of easy meals in my head, so can always whip something up. When I think back to my mother’s elaborate dinner parties in the 1980s and the work involved, I shudder!

I found it easier when there were four of us at home and I liked to make say a roast dinner that everyone enjoyed. Now it seems hard work to make a big dinner for just two of us and dc isn’t keen on the same meal the day after.

I think preparing everything earlier in the day would work for me.

Hate cooking. Im not working st moment, live alone, no kids so in theory have hours to dedicate to cooking but I don't. I rarely eat a proper meal. I'm overweight and its because I don't eat properly. I do have adhd and find it difficult or organise though.

I'd gotten really fed up and exhausted with meal planning and cooking lately. I don't cook every night, some nights it is a case of bunging something from the freezer into the oven, or doing a quick pasta dish or stir fry. I've just got stuck in a rut I guess, and it's only cooking for the two of us. So currently I'm doing a trial run (well, introductory offer) for Gousto for a month, today I got my recipe box for my third week and I'm really excited. Been trying lots of new recipes I wouldn't think of, it's been a breath of fresh air. I'm not sure I could afford Gousto at full price every week, but I think in future it's something I can go back to for inspiration! I'm keeping the recipe cards so I can recreate them from the supermarket in future.

And OP, I know exactly what you mean about cooking for two people. I find it's a lot of faff for the two of us as well, yet I would happily cook a big lovely roast for 10 people because it feels "worth it"!

As little as possible! Love food, am interested in food, loathe cooking most of the time.

I don't know anyone who cooks a proper dinner every evening and I think doing so would make me resentful.

I tend to try and alternate so that one day I cook a proper meal and the following day use the leftovers up. I also do beans on toast once a week and its FINE. Often try a new recipe on the weekend but frankly the lockdowns and lack of eating out has meant the continual drudgery of planning and cooking meals. I feel so uninspired and disinterested.

I have managed to get my DC cooking though, could that be something once a week? Life skills and a night off for you.

I like cooking, but it's often difficult to find time to cook a 'proper' meal from scratch in time for DD (toddler) to also eat with us, if we've been out all PM or if I've been working. I also struggle with organisation to make sure I've got enough ingredients in to make things so we do eat a lot of basic pasta and stir fry dishes as well as lots of freezer junk! The last few months have been terrible as I've had HG so it's been chaos here, but I'm recovering and hoping to get back to more nutritious cooking within the next few weeks. I've really missed it and also missed eating the fruits of my labour!!

I find it a chore; if it takes longer than 30 minutes then I’m unlikely to make it apart from things that you can prep and put in the oven like lasagne, and shepherds pie.
In theory I cook a proper dinner about 3/4 times a week, DH does a couple of nights at the weekend and one night is an easy night but realistically I think 3 times is more what happens.
I had a week of Gousto meals recently as had a 50% offer from a friend and I did actually enjoy cooking those so it’s reignited my interest a bit.

Grass is always greener OP and @freecuthbert. I would love to cook for two, as someone who is frequently cooking for 7-10 people it is soul destroying. Watching the volume and the speed at which it goes sends me spare.

Am asked how I keep my weight down. Cooking big meals! Nothing puts me off like the hordes of my family launching into my best culinary efforts.

We eat a lot of picky plates and "short cuts" and quick meals, especially during the week. Weekends I try to cook a bit more. If I could afford to we would eat a lot more of ready meals and takeaways and things like that,

Meal planning helps, for lots of reasons, not just financially!

I tend to have bigger cooking days then an easier day that I can use what was made the day before in a different way. Eg if made a mince dish such as shepherd's pie, I'd make extra and either use to freeze or the next day make chilli, lasagne etc.
I wfh, so also do things like prep food and put in the oven at a low temperature to cook ready for after work/school.

I also plan the meals based on the week's commitments, so if working late or school clubs, we may have a simple salad etc.

I also have an evening meal which is either a burger, pizza, ready prepared dinner or similar.

We do the gousto boxes which involves a degree of cooking each night. Been eating out at the weekends now we can and also get takeaways

I hate cooking more than anything else in the entire world. I've been cooking the evening meal since I was 14 and I'm 51 now so am fed up to the back teeth. I'd just have salad, ham, cheese and a boiled egg every evening if I could, but the others wouldn't tolerate that. Once the dcs leave home I'm never cooking again. Dh does quite a bit of it, but he gets fed up as well. It's such a boring chore at the end of the day when you just want to relax and veg out. Having to think up meals every day and make sure stuff is in to make them. It gives me the furies.

I really enjoy cooking mine and DHs evening meal. The kids (young) re mildly picky so I do simpler stuff earlier for them.

But I enjoy after they gone to bed pouring a glass of wine, putting a show on and standing prepping and cooking something for us.

Sometimes I do a slow cooker meal I prep earlier in the day so I dont spend any time after the kids are down cooking. But I enjoy the process.

I buy gousto so a proper cooked meal every night, total variation and takes 30-45 minutes depending what it is. before gousto i struggled to be bothered thinking of new things to cook.

I love cooking, so spend quite a lot of time cooking everyday. I wasn't so keen before dc, but since my dc has multiple food allergies, it was something I needed to do to cater for his needs and restrictions. Now I am quite glad that it forced me to try a lot of recipes and now I am a decent cook.

Until about 13 years ago, I cooked very little indeed from scratch, and wasn’t at all confident about cooling, so didn’t enjoy it at all.

Until about three years ago, I’d say about half easy meals or ready meals, and half cooking from scratch.

Now I cook everything from scratch. But not the type of food that takes forever to prepare from scratch and it’s just a part of everyday. Sometimes a meal takes maybe 20 minutes (from starting to prepare to serving) and sometimes about an hour. I have about three weeks’ worth of dinners on rotation.

Simple things like pasta with lemon, cream cheese (or just oil, if I am also eating it as I don’t like cream cheese) and chilli crab and prawns is super quick.

Nigella’s lamb, pomegranate and date tagine is about ten minutes of prep, shove it in the oven for nearly two hours, and in the last five minutes, I do the cous cous with pine nuts, lemon, coriander and sultanas. So less time than the pasta.

Thankfully DH and DS have varied tastes, so pretty much eat whatever I make. I’m sure I would feel differently about cooking if they didn’t.