Do you actually enjoy cooking every night, or is it just me who’s completely over it?

[Alyah]

I feel like I used to enjoy cooking, but lately it’s become such a chore. Between work, kids, and everything else, by the time I get to the kitchen I just want something quick and easy. But then I end up feeling guilty for not making “proper” meals.
Everyone on social media seems to be whipping up homemade dinners from scratch every night — meanwhile, I’m here trying to convince myself that oven chips and fish fingers count as balanced.
Does anyone still genuinely enjoy cooking daily, or have most people just accepted it’s about getting everyone fed and moving on?

I meal plan roughly each week, simply so I don't have to think or decide what to cook at 6pm every night. I batch cook about once a month... Bolognese, chilli, curry, stew, so have a stash in the freezer. Get takeaway once a month on payday.

Planning is the key though because if I know I'm going to be knackered or have a late meeting, I can just defrost something from the freezer.

I always treat myself to a g&t whilst cooking and crank the radio up loud… helps a bit!

I used to love cooking and am cordon bleu trained. A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with very high cholesterol and a fatty liver (now reversed).

I cut out red meat, processed meat, all UPFs, saturated fat and wheat. I feel a lot better but chicken, fish and salad get bloody boring and even more so when separately DH wants a steak or lamb chops.

I hated it for years when DD was younger as she was fussy and it just sucked all the pleasure out of cooking and eating. DH also has a few food foibles and doesn’t cook 🙄 so that doesn’t help.

Three things made a difference:

1. DD (when around, she’s at uni) now eats pretty much anything. And cooks.
2. I realised it’s almost entirely self-inflicted. I could stick simple meals on the table, buy ready meals, get takeaways. I mostly choose not to. If I ask for suggestions, my response is often ‘nah don’t fancy that’.
3. Recipe boxes. Turns three days out of every week into an exercise more like perusing a menu than meal planning. Then the cooking is more enjoyable as it’s just finding the right bits out of the box for one of three recipes, rather than dirtying through the cupboard for that carton of passata that OUGHT to be in there but .,,

However my kitchen is being ripped out on Monday … both dreading and rather looking forward to six weeks of simpler cooking.

I did try chat gpt but the quantities were way off. For example I had asked it for recipes that used up ingredients used in other meals to minimise waste and the recipes were good (mostly) but despite having specified they needed to feed 6-8 people the shopping list told me to buy one 500g bag of pasta to cover two meals and 250g turkey mince for two meals. Neither of those even covers one meal in our house!

Interesting, thanks. It's pribably scraping information from recipes for two or something. I'm just learning with all this but you probably need to tell it how much pasta you want to allow per person and so on. I find with playing with the information a bit it becomes more accurate.

I cooked nearly every single night too. By the time it’s all done is half seven and I manage to actually sit down I’m wrecked. I work ft too.
This week kicked off with a roast chicken on Sunday. Then leftover Chinese I made from Saturday resurfaced on Monday. Tuesday was an easy sausage, egg and chips. Wednesday was wagyu mince in chilli arabiata sauce and linguine, last night was chilli chicken breasts, mustard mash and veg. Tonight I’m not cooking, dh is as I’m fed up. Tomorrow will be a takeaway of sorts as my sil is arriving from Oz.
I don’t meal plan as such, but we’re very boring as have a roast every Sunday and takeaway on a Friday, Saturday this week.
I’m feeling the pain with everyone just reading it all.

I loathe it. I have a fussy underweight teen who has to be tempted to eat. She gets bored of things within about 2 weeks. She does occasionally cook for herself. Generally though I get the slog of thinking, buying and cooking.
Sometimes with two versions of the same thing. Thankfully they all eat curry, so we eat that once a week and I cook enough for two nights.

I'd consider fish fingers, chips and peas a balanced meal though OP, if it helps 😆.

I hate it now. Kids with SEN / allergies. I have IBS so often have to take each day at a time. Two or three different meals every day for a decade. It does my head in.
I do some batch cooking but we're restricted to three different recipes.

Same here. Teens with SEN, allergies, ARFID and pickiness. Single parent. I used to love cooking. I do meal plan and batch cook, but deep down I am so done!!

I hate it. I find it boring and I've never understood how people could choose to do it for a living. I'd quite happily spend the rest of my days just eating toast if I could.

I love it and I cook at least 6 nights each week.

I come home around 6.15pm when I work in the office, have 15 minutes to talk to DH and then start cooking. Cooking is actually my time where I don't speak to anyone, have silence and can just relax.

We have a small galley kitchen so it's not practical to have more people there.

Over the years I found so many easy recipes which don't take more than 1/2 hour and are really tasty.

When I work from home I have more time and then do things which take longer.

I hate reheated meals, I may do a pasta bake when I did bolognese the night before but that's it.
If there are leftovers, DH may have it the next day or we put a single portion curry in the freezer for him.

Therefore I also never batch cook, again, it's just not something I enjoy eating and I can cook a pasta sauce from scratch in basically the same time.

DD is now at uni, teaching her too cook was exhausting as it meant I had to deal with people. Luckily she caught on fast and did plenty of cooking for all of us as well.

Now on weekends DH and I cook together, making curry pastes from scratch or plenty of food DD wouldn't eat (she hates fish and most red meats).

I confess that during the week I rely heavily on packaged products to save time. Frozen chopped vegetables, including frozen onions which are a lifesaver, packets of stir fry vegetables, garlic paste in a jar etc. It makes things so much quicker if the chopping part is already done for you. And having mainly frozen vegetables means we can at least have more variety as it's easier to just stick a handful of three or four different veg into a dish.

Fortunately DH isn't one of those men that wants meat for every meal so on our busiest night of the week with work and clubs for DDs etc we have beans and fried egg on toast. It gets everyone fed and I can have it on the table in five minutes.

Mid week meals for us are a rotation of dinners that I know I can make in under 15 minutes. They aren't very inspiring but get the job done and they're still quicker than cooking fish fingers and oven chips or waiting for a takeaway (which there is nothing wrong with.) Things like falafel in wraps with hummus and salad, omelettes, pasta dishes, stir fries, steak with veg, cous cous, prawn thai curry made with a jar of curry paste and tinned coconut milk etc.

Weekends I'm happy to cook something more involved or batch cook a curry or a chilli for the freezer. I do almost all of the cooking in our house but DH does all of the washing up which I think is a fair compromise.

No, I don't, but I do enjoy eating so I'm stuffed.

(Never found any ready meal or take-away that I enjoyed enough to eat regularly.)

I find that it goes through ebbs and flows. sometimes I LOVE the evening ritual of starting supper with a glass of wine poured and the radio on. Other times I feel like I would literally rather do almost anything else but this. I dont like batch cooking, but what I do do, is firstly have a couple of really nice frozen ready meals in the freezer for those last minute nights when I really cant face cooking, and secondly pre-prep some of the basics that take a long time but that really elevate meals in a simple way....eg pre caramelize a whole bag of onions instead of doign them one by one for specific meals, and keep them in an airtight glass container in the fridge. Its a quick but effective jump start to so many meals and proper slow cooked onions take at least 20-30 mins and sometimes longer. I do the same with slow roasting fresh tomatoes in the oven with garlic and herbs till they break down and the flavour gets really intense. In the fridge, and add a spoonful to pasta sauce base, bolognese base etc etc .

We get Gousto most week, usually 4 meals a week. I really enjoy cooking them, because it's more complex than a ready meal or chucking a few bits in the oven, but I haven't actually had to think to hard about it, or meal plan or go shopping etc.

It scratches the same itch that building a Lego set does. Doing something with your hands that's actually fairly mindless.

I'm 55 and would happily never cook again if I didn't have to. DH is useless in the kitchen, burns water so all of it falls onto my shoulders. I cook from scratch for me as I'm a low carbing vegetarian diabetic but DH won't touch any plant based meals (thinks the lack of meat will kill him ) so I've started buying him Charlie Bigham ready meals a couple of times a week as cooking 2 separate meals is a PITA. I've batch cooked for him but he forgets its in the fridge/freezer or he doesn't fancy it the next day so I soon stopped as it's wasted food and effort.

I hate it. It’s now just me and two fussy teens at home but I don’t get home from work until half six and I’m knackered.
my kids don’t even like beige food 🤦‍♀️
even the few dinners they do like, they swish it round their plate then waste half of it, we’re not hungry blah blah.

drives me nuts and gets me down.

I do enjoy cooking in general but there are definitely nights where it feels like a grind, I think that's more to do with the planning than the cooking though. DC are both ND and have lots of sensory issues with food so getting any dinner down them is a pain.

I batch cook for me and DH at the weekends so generally we have something in the freezer for when it's a rush or I can't be arsed.

Absolutely hate it after years of bringing up a family. So bored of cooking dinner!! To be honest I would rather do a big pile of ironing than cook. When I’m occasionally by myself for the evening I often have a shop bought soup carton as I really can’t be bothered.

Since my separation I often eat crackers and cheese for dinner because sod cooking a big meal after work anymore. I have become a grazer

Cost of living hasn't helped. We used to have steak, roast lamb, duck as regular meals on our rotation but now it's turkey thigh mince and lentils.

I loved it when it was just me and DH, at weekends when I had time, because we spent stupid amounts of time commuting during the week. I had loads of cookbooks. I'd get excited about getting a new one, and enjoy reading it and choosing what to cook from it.

Now I work from home and can take time over it, but I can't be arsed. We're at an uncomfortable stage with two teenagers with sensory issues and strong opinions, and dinners are a mess of everyone having different things and there's always someone not quite happy with theirs. There's no joy in it any more.

I enjoy it and usually do two home cooked meals per day, unless there are leftovers from other meals (and even then I usually combine them into something new as I don't like eating the same thing twice). There's only me and my DP to cook for, though, and he will eat anything I put in front of him as long as it's veggie. I work from home so have the time. A lot of the meals are pretty simple, though, like hearty soups or dhals. He doesn't realise how lucky he is. If I'm away I think he just eats cereal or beans on toast.

If I had kids as well as working, there's no way I'd have the energy or inclination. My sister, who also loves cooking and is a great cook, despairs trying to feed her fussy kids.

My husband genuinely loves cooking and happiness to him is preparing meals from scratch - every day.

I have absolutely no interest in cooking and would find it a complete bore.