Are people really making homemade meals every night for their family?

[Lilacbluewaters]

soon to be family of 6 and I don’t know if it’s just because I’m pregnant at the moment but I had this sudden overwhelming feeling that I have to cook homemade meals every night for like another 15 years 😂
I’ve been pretty bad recently with eating out too much, the extra layer of washing up after is exhausting. We don’t have a dishwasher and can’t get one because we rent.
anyway, do you cook from scratch every night nearly? I can never think of quick easy meals.

Depends by what you mean from scratch. From scratch doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be slaving over a hot stove all evening... sticking a piece of salmon in the air fryer and steaming some veg is cooking from scratch but takes virtually no time.

We are a family of 6 with no dishwasher!

I cook "from scratch" most nights bar one night which is "club night" so we have ready meals. I use the term "from scratch " loosely and still have jar sauces etc.

Typical meals each week are Turkey meatballs (turkey mince, breadcrumbs, herbs, egg and rolled in flour), chicken fajitas, chicken curry, usually a roast on a weekend, sausage and mash.

I did most nights when DC lived at home and now I do every night for me and DH. Dh washes up usually.

How…just HOW!!?? I couldn’t do this, I would cry! 😭

Just wash up the old fashioned way 😂 after tea DH does bath for the DC and I clear plates, wash and leave to dry then put away the next morning. We lay towels on the worktop to dry stuff on. No space for a dishwasher and surely you have to empty and load it anyway so still takes time. I love it when we go on holiday and there's a dishwasher though!

This week

Monday -Peppers stuffed with parslied sausage meat (takes 5 mins), put in a dish and bake for 45 mins. Serve with chunky wholemeal bread spread with garlic butter.

Tuesday - Salmon steaks pan fried with cherry tomatoes, french beans & wholemeal couscous (takes 5 mins)

Wednesday - Fry chopped onions, garlic and fennel until soft, add tabasco, cannellini beans and a child's carton of apple juice. lay two cod/haddock steaks on top, and spread a chilli/paprika/oil paste on top of the fish. Put a lid on the pan and leave it to cook for 10 minutes.

Thursday - wholemeal pasta with a sauce of tomato, garlic, fennel seeds and mussels.

Friday - Pan fried chicken thighs with garlic, creamed coconut and chillies and green peppers, served on brown rice.

Choose recipes with few ingredients, Don't worry about making it look pretty if it tastes good.

quite often on a friday I will do frozen breaded fish and new potatoes, with lots of veggies

Friday is my day off. I may cook but nobody expects it. Sometimes I just want toasted pita and houmus or egg in toast.

Yeah it’s just the leaving it overnight I couldn’t do. And the washing it part. 🤣🤣

Tonight I made chicken with noodles and stir fried veg. I marinated the boneles mini fillets in soy, chilli, honey, lime, rice wine vinegar , ginger and garlic. Then I fried them. Removed form wok and stir fried the veg ( sliced broccoli , 3 peppers, spring onions, mushrooms, radish, carrot) added noodles tor he pan and then the sliced chicken. Very easy and very tasty.

My how was at the lack of dishwasher. Meal planning and cooking I am good with. I’m home by 5 latest every day so I have enough time.

Mine are teens now, OP, but I remember when I had three under 5yo and when I returned to work full time, it felt so overwhelming. Dh works away a lot as well, and really, I think you do what you can to get by. Yes of course, cooking from scratch would be ideal, but I don't think it needs to be all the time.

I got the 6-ingredient slow cooker book from Bored of Lunch for Christmas, and I've found the recipes in that to be easy and popular with my lot.

Bored of Lunch | Air Fryer & Slow Cooker Cookbooks.

Good luck when your new baby arrives.

Tonight we had Spaghetti with a fresh tomato, tuna and olive sauce and half a fresh corn cob (buttered with my home made butter that i'll get flamed for by a certain few miseries)

Home made apple and blackberry crumble batch cooked last weekend ( Shop bought custard though, yellow stickered, why wouldn't you ? )

A really simple meal from scratch that took 20 mins and something I did when I had 3 kids at home as a single parent.

Tonight we had a left over beef roast lunch and a left over bowl of pasta.

Probably 80% “from scratch” and the rest a bit easier with a takeaway maybe once a week for the kids (McDonald’s after clubs one night), and once a fortnight for us.

By “a bit easier” I mean stuff like shop bought chicken Kievs, fish fingers / breaded fish, oven pizza etc sometimes and also easy stuff like beans on toast or omelettes with toast. I make my own bread (in a bread maker) and it makes me feel better about the nights we have “something” on toast! But otherwise I’m fairly relaxed about stuff like UPFs as I think it makes up a small amount of our diet. I also have a dishwasher and only two kids!!!

Yes, but a) I love cooking and enjoy food shopping, b) DH washes up and we have a dishwasher, c) I now know our favourite meals and the stuff I need to buy so it's very streamlined and pretty effortless. For example, if I do roast chicken at the weekend I know we'll have chicken pasta and fajitas later in the week. Bolognase lasts for three meals as I make loads at once.

I also have easy recipes for if I'm feeling lazy and don't have much in stock, such as https://www.recipetineats.com/penne-all-arrabbiata-spicy-tomato-pasta/#recipe

I've enjoyed this thread immensely, so thank you. I will try to cook more naturally like many of you, more.

Sometimes we get the Bigghams ready meals when they have yellow labels from Waitrose, saves my sanity and I feel like the kids are getting some sort of good meal.

Hang on, how does salmon steaks, cherry tomatoes, french beans & wholemeal couscous take only five minutes?

Salmon and tomatoes in a hot pan, boiling water over couscous, and French beans in boiling water.

Salmon 2.5 minutes on each side. All ready in five minutes. Easy

That doesn't sound long enough for salmon steaks! And there's prep time too, surely, washing things, chopping the tops off the beans, waiting for the water to boil.
I mean, I'm not trying to claim it'd take hours, but it's surely not five minutes from start to table?

Mostly yes I do would say 6 dinners a week are from scratch but I do make life easy for myself by cooking larger cuts of meat twice a week.
That way dinner the following night or 2 is less then 20 mins so roast whole chicken one meal chicken wraps the following meal (I don't make the tortilla myself!). Or pulled pork followed by next day pulled pork bbq pasta. Summer is a lot easier as I often make a few different salad dishes which do a 2-3 days and easy lunch for me wfh and will then do meat/fish or eggs on the side.

Last night's dinner:
brown rice (washed then boiled) 40mins
frozen salmon fillets spread with pesto and baked
roasted asparagus and bell pepper tossed in evoo, sprinkle of salt and garlic powder

salmon took about 40mins at 425f
veg took about 20 mins and were put on the same tray with salmon at half-way point
Gave dc a bath and washed myself up in the meantime.
Dead easy and healthy.
Left-overs for dc's lunch.

Well, you'd have to add opening the packet of fish (10s) boiling the kettle once (at same time as opening packets and pouring the couscous into the jug) and opening the freezer to get the bag of frozen beans out, I guess.

Packaging would go into the bin straight away, spills wiped up immediately, plates and cutlery come out as the salmon is cooking, dish up onto the plates, pan into the sink or dishwasher with the spoon and fish slice, kick the door closed and walk away.

Having said that, it would take DP about 90 minutes, the fish and beans would have been returned to the microwave to reheat three times (and go dry), at least one expensive (naturally) pan would be burned on the underside from the flame being too high and the kitchen would resemble a massacre in a fish market afterwards, so time and motion/efficient kitchen practice doesn't come naturally to everybody, I guess.

Why yes, yes, I am somewhat miffed by the time I spent earlier trying to make my £158 pan look cream instead of burned brown after finding the kitchen under a layer of crud when I went out there for a cuppa - funny that you should mention it...

Yes almost every night for forty years but there’s only ever been the two of us, we take it in turns, and whoever cooks doesn’t clear up (we have almost always had a dishwasher). I think it would be entirely different if we’d been a bigger household.