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 :(

frozen bought mash is excellent

I love it, I just add butter & milk & pop in the microwave

Both me and hubby were commuting toLDN.
Me/him would make lunch for both of us in the evening for the next two days: chicken with rice and salad, steamed fish with broccoli and barley etc.
one day a week we would eat at work cafeteria
one day a week we were getting a takeout/go out
sundays we cook together.
we were both dieting so it was easy with a meal plan-once a week shopping for supplies

Op where will you be working? in a town, near a retail park? I used to use my hour lunch time to shop so I didn't have to do it at other times, this is ok in the winter or if you have a fridge at work for the fridge stuff

I use Gousta every few months. I like it because so like variety, I don't want to eat the same thing twice a week & whilst I love beans on toast, it wouldn't fill me or the dc up.

If I won the lotto a chef would be the dream!

As a single mum with a hollow legged teen, I have a repertoire of about 40 meals that take 15 mins work to prepare. We have a budget of £45 a week for the two of us.

Tray bakes (chicken, haddock etc)
Casseroles & slowcooker things that I prep and put in at lunch time so they are ready by 6 (cassoulet, ratatouille, gammon & veg in apple juice etc)
Dishes that I batch cook at the weekend and just need to reheat.

Anything that takes more than 15 minutes work seldom gets made.

You'll work it out 🙂

@swg1

I am so impressed with the 5 meals in one hour! I am inspired to have a manic cooking session tmrw. I will imagine the countdown clock song playing. brilliant!

I usually make a plan and shop for the week ahead at weekend, that way I don’t buy things that go to waste. A large part of my shopping gets cooked or prepped before it even hits the fridge to get me through the start of the week, then towards the end of the week it’s often pizza or something from the freezer.
work lunches are often leftovers from dinner the day before so that’s one less thing to prepare, or I make a big pot of soup at weekend (often using frozen veg to save on prep).
anything like chilli, slag Bol, curry etc gets made in bulk and portions frozen.
I use short cuts like the bags of stir fry veg, frozen chopped onions and garlic paste etc.
there’s always a bag of oven chips, quorn sausages, battered fish and a bag of peas in the freezer for when I really can’t be bothered preparing anything.

I'll be working out of town, on a "business park". I had a drive round and there doesn't seem to be any shop, not even a sandwich shop.

That's rubbish, DH & I buy lunch except when wfh & the dc have school dinners so it makes it all a bit easier.

somethings those parks have a sandwich van that comes, captive market!

I'm not too worried about dinner, I'll happily eat salad every day. Doesn't need thinking about

That’s good for your purse and waistline though cos you have to take your own food and no nipping out for pastries mid morning or shop bought lunches.

I don’t quite understand Gousto/Hello Fresh as the couple of times I’ve tried it, it’s saved me no time & the food wasn’t well seasoned.

We have a mix of frozen batch cooking, fresh meat plus easy veg (eg salmon in honey & soy sauce, microwave rice and broccoli) and we keep a good stock of frozen Cook meals which are expensive but way cheaper & healthier than a takeaway, for the nights we can’t be bothered at all.

Cook is fantastic, it does stop us in our tracks from speed dialling the local Indian.

I batch cook at the weekends

Well it is a bore, but you meal plan and order an online shop to come on Sunday. I add things to the Alexa shopping list as I go through the week (and the DCs do too).

I have about a 3 week list of meals, that I use - so it isn't difficult to choose something. I do 5 cooked meals, plus a beige meal, plus a cupboard supper (which is anything I have in the fridge/cupboard -as I was wasting alot of food) each week. The weekday meals are reasonably quick meals but tend to be at least one pasta, one fish, a couple of veggie/vegan, one meat.

Presumably your DP can take it in turns to cook too? My dc are a bit older now and we take it in turns to cook.

Sometimes I'm super organised and get something ready while my dd is having breakfast in the morning (a curry or whatever).

I've never had missing ingredients from Gousto in case that's worrying you OP.

There's 2 of us and I order 4 person dinners so I only have to cook twice & reheat the leftovers the next day. I pick the meals carefully to be the kind of stuff that's ok reheated.

DH occasionally does a big batch cook at a weekend and sorts out loads of curry or chilli. Then we get takeaway once a week. I bought a rice cooker, we use that on freezer days - whack portioned up food into the microwave, get the rice cooker on and 30 mins later dinner is ready.

Batch cook or do those batch prep bags that just involve dumping it in the pan and cooking. I batch cook at the weekend, take out the next days meal the evening before and that way it’s ready to heat and eat when we get home, no effort required.

Meal plan and online order
Or Gousto - actually worked out quite economical for us because we hardly needed to buy any extras, and often had leftovers. Meals are quick and delicious.

We eat things like that. Many can be batch cooked and the others are quick anyway. I'm lucky that DS doesn't care if we have the same up to three nights in a row, so I tend to do that with chilli, bolognese, curry, soup. We will have chilli and bolognese over jacket potatoes as well to make it a bit different. I freeze any extras.

I work full time out of the house, I shop weekly and it's just me cooking, though DS helps when requested.

So Asda has a thing on their app where you can set up "shopping lists".

I figured I am prepared to eat leftovers quite often, but obviously that doesn't work easily if you're already cooking for 4-5.

So I wrote 5 shopping lists for evening meals, made up of things which either reheat well, could be separated into two meals and one not baked, or where the leftovers could be different from the first one. I figured I am happy to eat cheese on toast/something v easy at least once a week or am out.

So each week only needed 3 meals. Rotating round once a month is viable, and if you can bear to do a new list e.g. every two weeks for the first 2 months you aren't on a depressingly frequent meal rotation.

Then I have a separate list which is breakfasts and lunches which is pretty much the same every week with the odd change of breakfast food/sandwich filling. Sometimes I'll want to change things but if it's a stupid week I just tick two boxes and a functional set of food turns up. Sometimes I forget to remove something like sweet chilli sauce but I just shove them in the cupboard and it's never happened with the same thing over and over again.

It was quite an annoying task first time but I much prefer one off jobs to endless repetition so it was less bad than meal planning every week would be.

We do super quick adult meals in our working days. Microwave rice, quickly chop up veggies or freezer ones, soy sauce, garlic and ginger from a tube and chicken/prawns. Takes ten mins. Lots of fresh pasta, wraps, stir fry.

Batch cook, and also learn the quick tasty recipe that you can cook from whatever you have at home that day.

I love cooking, so I spend a lot of time cooking. But also I can make tasty dinner in 20 mins if I had to.

Having meat in the freezer properly cut and separated really help, imo for quick cooking. Also batch cook and freeze things like meatballs, helps make the rushed dinner cooking very easy.

We both work ft and commute (dark in winter/light in summer!) we do a big shop at the weekend or a few ad hoc shops during the week and eat later than ideal! (we have 2 teens) the earliest we are home is 6pm, latest for me is 6.45, but DH is often later.

Shop and cook on a Sunday. Make 2 nights' worth of meals to put in the freezer for later in the week.

Chop up veg and meat so it's all ready to be quickly stir fried on Monday night. Have a pizza another night, with lots of chopped up salad veg.

Stuffed pasta with a bought sauce takes literally five minutes for another quick meal.

Have a good-quality ready meal or takeaway on Friday night, and Saturday you should have time to cook.