Do people really eat a cooked meal every single night?

[JonesyAndTheSalad]

I just can't!

I have done this week as we've got guests so it seems the polite and right thing to do...to cook a meal each night.

But the endless stream of meat and potatoes is awful!

We've had pasta one night but that was also with meat...another night we had pizzas...home made...the other nights it has been curry with chicken and rice and a variety of red meat with various potatoes.

I always ask the guests "What do you fancy this evening?" and it's always meat and potatoes of some kind!

Is this usual? Tonight I just didn't fancy it so said I didn't fancy a full meal and I ate some yogurt...they were a bit

Do you eat like this every night? Or do you sometimes think "Meh I'll have a sandwich" or "The kids will be happy with egg on toast and some fruit"

Or is it only me?

Of course we have dinner. It's rarely meat and potatoes and often isn't cooked by me, what with the fact I live with another adult and have two teenagers. Sometimes it's not technically 'cooked' though that's very rare. But I like dinner. I would hate to have just a yogurt. And I'd get terribly hungry.

We have a variety of different main meals here - most cooked but some cold/salads - I do try to vary things, and not to have too much red meat - so at least one chicken meal, and one fish meal, and usually one meal with bacon or sausages each week.

As a previous poster has said, if we have a main meal out, then we'll usually have a sandwich or something light for tea.

There was a thread on here recently where someone was asking if it was unusual that she cooks three hot meals a day, pretty much every day - that did boggle my mind!

Yes we do, I could never just give DH a cold meal and feel like he's eaten enough and tbh he would be hungry too. it's personal preference though. we have one curry a week, one pasta, fajitas or Mexican another night, and maybe a pie or casserole or home made Chinese on another. Friday is always my "night off" and its frozen pizza and chips.

home cooked meal every night here
not always meat and potatoes,
we eat alot of fish
rice and pasta with
roasted/steamed veg

Yes, we have a hot meal almost every night. The only times we don't would be in the school holidays or weekends when we might have had a hot meal at lunchtime instead.
What it comes down to is having one hot meal a day. DS2 doesn't like to have a hot lunch though - he's a bit set in his ways and to him hot meal = dinner, not lunch. And he doesn't like salad veg, so to get veg into him, it needs to be cooked (he will eat fruit, but he needs veg too).

Yes, we eat a proper evening meal every night. I shop for it, I cook it. Fish or meat are almost always at the heart of it.

We have a cooked meal every night but I don't cook every night.

I cook ahead on Sundays for 3 meals. Thursday will be chicken and chips from the freezer, so I don't count that as cooking. Friday we have something like pizza that the kids help with.

If we eat out on a saturday or Sunday lunch we just have toast or cheese and crackers.

In the summer we eat a lot of salad but warm salad so will cook some chicken or bacon to go with it.

Well, there are umpteen different ways of cooking potatoes, several different meats, lots of different vegetables and ways to cook them, loads of types of fish, loads of types of pasta, rice. I cook probably 13 out of every 14 nights and won't have the same thing twice in those two weeks. It really isn't that difficult.

I'm curious as there are so many who seem to eat their main hot meal in the evening, how do you manage evening sporting activities for example? I'm at work five days a week and compete in a sport on Saturdays, so training is evenings. I feel grim as anything if I've eaten a big meal before hand and couldn't face one straight after.

Actually I guess the answer is people who do evening sports just have light meals those nights, I just would have thought the number of people in that boat would be greater, and yet so many seem to cook full on dinners every day!

I cook every week day night because only one of the five people in the family has the option of cooked food at lunch, and he's a bottomless pit...

We don't have meat and potatoes every night, although I don't vary the carbohydrates as much as I'd like to because my youngest just won't eat rice or pasta. I still serve them, but he just quietly doesn't eat them and asks for an apple, which isn't much of a dinner for a 6 year old who had a couple of cheese sandwiches and an apple and a raw carrot for lunch...

Jacket potato and tuna-sweetcorn or beans counts as a cooked meal in our house, as do pancakes with savoury filling or apple sauce... Or "proper" cooked meals too obviously. Not things on toast just because most of us have a packed lunch involving bread.

Yes, family of 4 with 2 teenagers. But probably only eat meat about twice a week. Always sit down together round the table.

Lunch is a different matter - I usually expect people to fend for themselves with a sandwich or something egg-based. If I'm on my own I may just have crackers, hummus and a piece of fruit.

Not just every night. Every morning and lunchtime too in this house.

"I'm curious as there are so many who seem to eat their main hot meal in the evening, how do you manage evening sporting activities for example?"

Eating is my sport....

I don't eat a cooked meal most nights, but we can't have children and so there isn't any real need to make ourselves cook a meal every night.

If we had a family we'd make the effort. But at the end of the work day I have absolutely no desire to cook anything, and neither does DH

Usually we cook a meal every night, but we might have something from the freezer one night of the week, either leftovers or a frozen pizza, something like that.

All this talk of warm salads makes me crave one

It really varies here, DH is the cook when he's around as due to disability I find cooking more of a struggle. He's often on late shifts and on those days he will do a hot lunch before he leaves so I can do cold stuff in the evening, or 9yo DD does it as she enjoys it.

I often forget to eat in the evenings myself. Currently in morning sickness phase so it's one day at a time, nibbling when I can kind of thing. As long as the kids are fed it's fine but they aren't fussed if it's a hot meal or not TBH, they aren't big eaters. Normally they have either lunch or dinner hot but on the days we don't manage it (like Thursdays when we are dashing about between various activities) it's not a big deal.

Our house is too small for guests to stay though so wondering what to feed others over more than one meal has been an issue that's come up.

I'd get really bored with meat and potatoes kind of thing too (current steak cravings notwithstanding :o), much prefer hot salads, soups, pasta, rice etc

Exposure we eat at 5 on the days DS1 has football training or a match - usually 3 times a week unless the match is a weekend morning that week (they are annoyingly often on a Friday evening). I work early shifts so I'm home mid afternoon and Dh chooses to start and finish earlier than typical 9-5 so also usually makes it in by 5, so we can all sit down together at 5, though it's usually 6 if no evening activities.

Ds1 happily eats a cooked meal an hour before he has to be at training and has never complained of I'll effects - perhaps because he's young... He has no appetite after training when I've tried it that way around and it's really too late. He also needs to get straight into the bath or shower!

Yes. I try to have 2 or 3 things going at a time so that we have a bit of a selection.

We eat a meal, and then go and play sports afterwards. You don't have to eat yourself silly.
My parents have a hot evening meal and at lunch too.

No evening sporting activities here! We either eat at 5 with the kids, or at 8 when they have gone to bed.

Has never been an issue sorry

I certainly do, and this is also what I grew up with.

I do almost all of the cooking, but then, this is something I enjoy and I feel is one of the most important points in a day, with the family eating together.

We don't eat meat at all however, and maybe this has made me more adventurous than average. I'm always trying out new recipes and trying to source unusual ingredients.

There's no reason why anyone has to be this way, I mean, as long as everyone is fed and healthy.

Yes, we have a cooked meal every night - mostly packed lunch during the day but tbh even on the few days DD has a hot school lunch she still has a cooked tea

It would have to be a really big meal at lunchtime for me to eat something minimal at night.

Sports/exercise is either straight after work or after 9 pm.

Would expect that far more people are constrained by work and not being able to eat a hot lunch than are restricted by sports / exercise in the evening

SHatners I never said it was "hard" just that I found it too much.