Food shopping, cooking and eating - how on earth do people manage?

[Peasepuddingbloodycold]

After about 12 years of working from home and/or part time work I'm going to be in a situation were both DP and I are working full time out of the home, with a commute. I can't get my head round how to fit in the shopping and cooking of healthy, appetising meals on a budget.

Years ago, the last time I was in this situation, meant doing a big shop out-of-town every Sunday morning. Now I'm in the habit of walking to the shops at the top of the street and bringing home a couple of bags of shopping two or three times a week. Picking up whatever we fancy.

I just can't see how we'll manage to prep and eat healthy meals at the end of a long day at work and commute (in the dark). We're surrounded by takeaways and whilst DP is happy to live on vegetables I'm an emotional eater who is already overweight :(

We meal plan a 4 week menu based around a Sunday meal we can reheat on Tuesday and weds. A few baked potatoes, some batch cooked meals and some quick meals that take a few mins (tuna pasta, risotto, beans on toast!)

Okay. A friend tells me my method sounds crazy and as though I'm being held hostage by Sue Perkins but it works for me so I'll share it with you.

I have a few meals that share ingredients. For about an hour on a weekend when I know I'm not going to want to cook during the week I will go crazy and speedcook them. I worry little about mess or how many dishes or pans will be left behind in my frantic hour. I just cook as though someone were yelling "AN HOUR LEFT, BAKERS" in my ear.

A standard week will be two pasta dishes (say mac and cheese and bacon, and mozzerella and ham), a hash, and an enormous pan of mashed potato. So the potatoes will be chopped and go on to boil. The potatoes or sweet potatoes for the hash will go onto boil. An entire bag of pasta will go on to boil. An entire large pack of bacon will be fried, then sat on kitchen roll to soak up the fat. The same pan will then be used to fry onions. Small children will be recruited to chop mozzarella, tear up ham and tear up bacon. The sweet potatoes will be thrown into the frying pan with the onions, and then half the bacon. It gets put into a glass tupperware dish and set to cool (DISH 1)

A basic cheese sauce will be made up (butter and flour, then milk, then grated cheese), and then half the pasta will be added, and the remaining bacon. It gets poured into a casserole dish and left to cool (DISH 2)

With my other hand I'm stirring a tomato sauce made of tinned tomatoes and whatever veg and herbs came to hand. The remaining pasta is added and then the mozzarella and ham, with a little left to sprinkle on top. That's poured into another casserole dish (DISH 3)

All that is left is to mash the enormous bag of potatoes with butter and milk. It's usually about three family sized portions when mashed. That's set into yet another glass tupperware dish to cool, because I know if I have potatoes it's only a ten minute job during the week to fry up some meat of some variety (cheap steak, sausages, pork chops) and add some veg (DISHES 4-6)

Everything gets lidded and cling filmed and put in the fridge. Pans get very gradually loaded in the dishwasher over two days. I come home, I grab one of the ready prepared meals and shove in the oven. It is probably the most manic way of cooking ever, and I won't claim that the dishes are the healthiest (though you could probably do similar with healthier options) - but it is healthier than a takeaway, and cheaper, and it works, and it keeps us fed on weeks where I am losing my mind.

Gousto might work out a bit more expensive but it’ll save your sanity.

Gousto and similar have never appealed to me because I actually enjoy thinking about what to eat and I worry about the amount of packaging involved, as well as the cost. I can see for others with less time, though, it could be useful once in a way.

Meal planning doesn't have to be depressing. Do you have a good-sized freezer? That helps. So does a microwave or any other gadget that heats food up fast. Slow cooker might work if you can get organised enough to have something in it in the morning which is then ready for you to eat when you get home, with some quick cooked veg alongside.

Ideas for meals that need very little time to prepare or finish off when you get in:
Omelettes, salad, nice bread/garlic bread/oven chips
Hummus &/or other dips, warmed pitta, sticks of carrot, cucumber, celery, peppers etc
Nice cheese, bread or oatcakes or good crackers, chutney, salad
Pasta and some kind of sauce, bit of salad - keep in some ready-made pesto or other jar sauce for evenings when you're absolutely knackered, and for times when you've got a bit more oomph make a simple home-made tomato sauce, or a tomato-based sauce with other veg in it, e.g. mushrooms, courgettes, aubergines, peppers - and grated Parmesan. You could make a sauce at the weekend and keep it in the fridge.
Lots of casseroles and curries, lasagne, moussaka, ratatouille etc are actually even better flavourwise when re-heated, so if you made something like that for a weekend meal, double up the portions and have the second half during the week, or put in the freezer for another time. Very simple to heat up with rice or noodles or basic dumplings or flatbread if needed, plus some sort of quick vegetable or salad.
Fish fillets are incredibly quick to cook and freeze well.

Sausage and mash. I've not tried it myself but have often seen people saying frozen bought mash is excellent, so that might help, or freeze some when you make it for another meal.

Thank you to everyone who is sharing meal ideas. I am taking it on board and getting inspired.

@swg1 that is very inspiring. A couple of hours pain does sound like a fair investment.

Gousto might work out a bit more expensive but it’ll save your sanity. I think you may be right, at least during Jan and Feb whilst we both get used to the new regime during the miserable winter.

If you have kids 》meal plan, batch cooking.

If you don't have kids 》multivitamins, beans on toast, crisps and wine.

Food thinking is incredibly boring.

What I did was get all the Gousto/Hello Fresh meals I liked, sort them into sets of 5 for a week, with 3-4 weeks worth, then do a shopping list per week. So I could basically do my own Hello Fresh. Cheaper and more environmentally friendly because you buy the spices in a big pack rather than the per person portions you get from HF etc., and you have the instructions on a nice card.

Once I put the effort into sorting them and doing a shopping list for each week, it's been really easy. Now I've branched out into non-HF type meals, and including stuff I like in general. I only bother with 4-5 meals/week and wing it for the weekends though.

If you go down the beans on toast route do not have it more than five times on the bounce, the stomach ache on day 6 was something else.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I hate slow cookers and don't have a massive fridge. I kind of prefer a half empty fridge but DP likes a fridge full of half-finished jars of god knows what and vegetables left for weeks on end (that he does eat eventually).

I'd like to be the kind of person who steams some fish and some leaves and drizzles a couple of tomatoes in extra virgin olive oil and declares it a feast. In actuality I like ordering pizza and a portion of chips from the takeaway.

If you go down the beans on toast route do not have it more than five times on the bounce, the stomach ache on day 6 was something else.

Good excuse to stick to a variety of takeways.

Ok, I think @dgirluk and others have the solution that will work for me I reckon.

Nah too much hard work and thinking and planning and buying things doing it that way. Go on Gousto, pick what you like the look of, wait for the ingredients to turn up, cook the meal. That’s all I can cope with.

I mean there are varieties depending on what I have to work with that week. They were reducing whole chickens in Aldi yesterday and I got a massive one so that's going to be tomorrow's chicken dinner, then the leftover meat divided maybe between a curry sauce and a pie (pro tip, small children are great at shredding cold chicken off the bones, their fingers are smaller), and the carcass used for slow cooker chicken soup which my kids are addicted to. There is a lot of pasta though, cause it works well in traybakes.

The trick I find is that I can't let myself promise I'll do it tomorrow. I won't. If I look in the fridge Monday and find half a cooked chicken I'll siiiiiigh and maybe make a cold chicken and gravy sandwich. I absolutely have to do it all at once - even if I need to clear the kitchen devastation afterwards - because finding motivation for one big run is much easier than the frankly exhausting thought of needing motivation every single day.

Gusto packing is pretty much all recyclable now. We certainly have less plastic than when doing a traditional shop

they always have offers op and if an ingredient is missing or poor quality (very rare) you get a refund

ive tried meal planning/ prepping etc I honestly cba and we cut back in other areas so we can do it.

Your usual food sounds delicious but also simple to make, Op.

Sainsbury's can deliver for £40 or do a click and collect?
I think your meals are easy to do in half an hour.

Maybe get organic ready made soup for one night, take away one night, lentil thingy with tinned lentils only take warming up. Get things that can be cooked from frozen.
Maybe skip breakfast or lunch and save up the calories for dinner? or do a couple of work outs in the weekend to compensate for convenience food?

Easy quick meals
Salmon &veg
Stir fry
Pasta
Eggs
And order a click & collect shop on way home or food delivery slot

I struggle with the organisation of it all so my best buy was another freezer which I stuff with vegetables, chips, pie, fish, leftovers if I get around to batch cooking etc so if I haven't managed to meal plan & shop I at least have food in the freezer. It's always why I always live 10 mins to a high street so I can get to the shops if I need something.

Week 1 I batch cook 3 dinners worth of chilli, 2 go in freezer.
Week 2 it’s 3 dinners worth of curry
Week 3 it’s pasta sauce

So every Sunday I cook one big thing and we have chilli, curry and pasta ready to go during the week. Add a beans, egg, toast night and a soup and toasted butty night - or one of those bags of stir fry etc - and you’ve got super quick meals that don’t cost much.

Weekly supermarket deliveries Sunday morning so I’ve got the ingredients to batch cook.

I meal plan for every 4-5 days. Always make a soup the last day to use up any leftover veg. We eat out once a week, no takeaways.
I try and do a couple of new recipes a month just to relieve the tedium!.
Faves are
Shakshuka ( with feta, not eggs)
Veggie chilli and nachos the next day
Sweet potato jackets and prawns
Chicken thighs/ chorizo/ chickpeas/ peppers

I do a stir fry once a week as it's so quick & pasta with something.

I was the same for ages - then got fed up with all the plastic, missing ingredients, cost etc.

Usually I'm just buying veggies at the supermarket, plus usual stuff like milk etc. Meat we typically buy in bulk at Costco every few weeks and stick it in the freezer, and the herbs/spices are bought every few months depending on how often it's used.

Different things work for different people :)

A typical week would be chilli-non-carne with rice; poached eggs on ciabatta; spicy beans and feta in wraps; vegetable and lentil curry with rice; soup and a roll, takeaway, left over takeaway.

From this list, you could batch cook the chilli and curry and then the eggs/wraps/soup would pretty quick and easy anyway. You could also make a big pot of soup and freeze it. I don't think it'll be as hard as you think once you get into the swing of it. But then my meal planning consists largely of homemade soup, pasta, baked potato and things on toast. Plus pizzas on a Friday night!

when I worked full time, I shopped on one day/evening and then preprepared all the food.

I had freezer dump bags for the slow cooker, so would take out a freezer bag full of food and place in the sink as I went to bed, then place the contents in the slow cooker as I went to work. The food was ready to eat upon my return. This is really handy if there are two of you, as you can make 5 days worth of slow cooker dump bags and then each evening portion up for you both - then freeze the other half for next week

We get 3x Gousto 2-person meals every fortnight.

That means on a Gousto week my meal planning & shopping only consists of breakfast items, lunch stuff, and maybe pasta & veg for the other 2 weekday nights. (Weekends you can pick up what you want from the shops.)

On a non-Gousto week we do have to meal plan for main meals but it’s basically batch cook mince for bolognese/chilli, something oven-based like chicken Kiev & chips, buy some tortellini, make an omelette or jacket potato (buy frozen!) or soup. Very little actual ‘cooking).

We find the Gousto meals generous so the 2-person serving does me, teen DD and preteen DD, and if DH wants some I just add extra veg or rice from the cupboards.

I’ve never had missing ingredients from Gousto in the six months I’ve been using them. Must be lucky!

It might motivate you to get home and cook instead of pick up a take away if you knew all the ingredients were chopped and prepped ready to be cooked?
When I started keto I would have a keto bar or some almonds to eat on my commute home, sometimes babybel even.... so that I'm not tempted when I walk past the most aromatic curry house ever on my way home.
If you think the temptation is that you will see take away and think fuck it, then have a healthy snack or sugar free fizzy drink or flavoured water or sugar free sweets to occupy you.
I find agreeing on what the meal for the evening is makes me feel like I've committed to a specific dinner and would be embarrassed to justify to my slim and athletic DH why I caved and picked us an Indian instead!