Birthday weekend ready meals - OK or not?

[whiskyowl]

MIL has one of those birthdays coming up with a '0' on the end.

DH and BIL are paying for a weekend away for six of us to celebrate. This involves hire of a cottage, a special activity for a day (£200), and we are also paying all food and booze. We've made a huge cake, too.
Obviously, the costs here are quite high.

We will all help cook one meal on two of the evenings. However, this means cooking after the all-day activity, when we will all be pretty tired.

I suggested that instead of cooking from scratch on that night, we got some ready meals in from that posh frozen place, Cook. We could then just bung them in the oven and chill out.

This idea was met with horror from BIL and partner on the grounds that it 'sends the wrong message' and 'wouldn't be spoiling MIL'.

I've never really thought of high-end ready meals as inferior, and I'd never judge someone who served me one. (I'm generally just grateful to be served any food at all!) But I am very definitely not as posh as the rest of them.

Would you be offended at being served high-end ready meals in this situation?

I totally agree that cook food is way better than a take away or M&S ready meal. I bought my family a lamb casserole from there and they said it was the best they'd ever had. Just go ahead and ignore your BiL.

I'm sure the Cook meals are nice enough, but if it was my birthday and up to me (which it isn't) I'd rather just have an Indian takeaway.

I like ready meals, but they can be on the bland side.

Cook actually do Indian food, amongst other things, saucyjack!!

God it sounds exhausting, trying so hard to pander and fit in with these people

OP, if I were you I would get the Cook food, put it into your own dishes, and tell them you made it the day before. job done!

Yes, but if they're going for an upmarket "home-cooked" taste, then it's not going to taste like a lovely greasy BIR take-away.

I wouldn't fancy paying fifty quid for a sensible dinner that I could've cooked myself.

Worra - Yeah, both DH and I find it really tiring. I think that's one reason I'm taking the advice I've had on this thread to do whatever makes Christmas survivable! I will suck it up for this break, though, since it's a birthday and BIL feels so strongly about it.

I didn't want this thread to be all about me, though. I think I phrased my initial post badly - I intended it to be more a general question of etiquette, to ask whether this would be OK or a no-no in other families! There's clearly a split of opinion: for some, readymeals are not OK, for others (seems to be the majority so far?) they are fine.

Having read your further posts OP, I'd take great delight in decanting a COOK lasagne into your own dishes ( either for this break or for Christmas) watch them eat it and then tell them afterwards it was from COOK. They sound like terribly hard work.

FWIW when I have friends over sometimes I will order in takeaway rather than cook a meal. There are a number of reasons for that - firstly I'm not a hugely confident cook, secondly I don't have a lot of spare time and thirdly I see friends coming over as a largely social occasion where we get to catch up and spend time together. Obviously we pay for it as we are hosting. I'll let people know in advance and so far no one has complained.

We had a “Cook” Christmas - instead of presents between adults. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The food was delicious, no stress, no big demands or expectations on anyone. Very relaxing way to cater. Would do it again.

I've been to dinner parties where people have used Cook. I only know as I've used them from time to time when time is of the essence (and was once asked for the recipe for the fish pie).

Completely fine in my view although can be quite costly if catering for a number of people.

Having read your further posts OP, I'd take great delight in decanting a COOK lasagne into your own dishes ( either for this break or for Christmas) watch them eat it and then tell them afterwards it was from COOK. They sound like terribly hard work.

Do it OP!

Cook is expensive, no doubt about it. But it is less than most takeaways. £27 for a lasagne for eight, and some steamed vegetables or green salad on top still works out slightly cheaper even than fish and chips, and most takeaways are a bit more than that.

I'm definitely doing that with the lasagne at Christmas. I am always on my knees with tiredness in December. I have SAD quite badly, and I struggle enough without having to cook 3 course meals every night!! If they are offended by it, then that's their problem.

I guess you are right whisky and for a special occassion like xmas eve i may give it a whirl

I suppose it's all down to your attitude towards food. I welcome holidays such as Christmas and Easter, and times spent away with friends at a holiday hire, as an opportunity to take sometime over cooking and don't consider it a chore.

Ive always found lots of volunteers to cook, many fewer to wait / carry in and out, and wash up.

Just sayin

Actually I know this isn't the point of the thread but an acceptable compromise to all maybe an order of Hello Fresh or whatever those boxes with all the ingrediants is called.
You get all the stuff you need and you can usually pick how long the recipe takes to prep. Plus they usually have very generous starter money off offers for newbies. Tried it a few times and felt it was expensive for what you got , plus the packaging seemed a bit excessive, but for this situation it could fit the bill perfectly.

Plus will still wind up the ILs but they won't be able to put their finger in why

hillarious - I suspect you'r'e right. This is a bit of a derail, because it has nothing really to do with whether readymeals are OK or not, but I think it also depends who you're with. I'm no Michelin-starred chef, but I'm happy to potter with DH in the kitchen on a lazy weekend, or to cook for mates. I get really stressed when I know that I may be on the receiving end of patronising 'advice on how to improve' from the people for whom I'm cooking - I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but it makes me feel inadequate, and then I start to dread the slightest mistake, which of course makes mistakes far more likely to happen!

I think there's also a question of time here. As I said the meal will be cooked after a full day out - the activity will start at 8am and won't finish til 6pm, and we will be outdoors all day, in what looks likely to be constant rain. The prospect of turning around and starting to cook at 7pm is a lot less appealing than the prospect of just going to the pub to dry out and warm up, then bunging a Cook lasagne in the oven

Or indeed why not just eat at the pub if you’re there already ?

Cook ready meals are lovely - how on Earth is it ‘sending the wrong message’ to not kill yourselves cooking from scratch something that probably won’t even be nicer

rookie - That would be the best option, tbh. However, part of the rationale is cost control. DH and BIL are paying for the entirety of the cottage, the activity - which is a couple of hundred, Saturday lunch and for a proper Sunday lunch out. FIL hasn't even offered to chip in! I actually think MIL is secretly quite disappointed that we're not staying somewhere grander (we stayed somewhere v grand indeed for FIL's 'big birthday', but that was because MIL organised it and paid 1/3 of the cost. It still cost each couple around £500 for the weekend that time, and we are spending the same this time around but with two couples, not three IYSWIM).

We have saved up for this for months, but it's hurting us quite badly, especially as we are both losing around 14 days' of pay this month compared to usual. We are sacrificing our holiday this year to do this, since it leaves us with no money for a trip away over Easter.

Pub meals in this location are around £12-15 per person, plus drinks on top (and the family are big drinkers). With 6 people, that's £150. We just can't afford it on top of everything else.

When I move back to the UK I am going to live out of Cook. Their beef and Merlot pie is the bomb.

Johnny - I never thought I would say the phrase "I love this tagine" - but their veggie one is amazing!

I haven't had anything from them that I haven't really liked. It's not fine dining, but it is very good, tasty, hearty hot food.

The last thing you'll want to do after a big day out it start faffing in the kitchen.

A ready meal, a casserole taken from home or a takeaway would be the best options.
Surely the treat is the weekend away, the cottage and the activity? Not the Saturday night supper?
They all sound very precious.

ohwhat - Yes, if anything the treat meal is the homecooked one on Friday, when we arrive. I am making this in advance to take along, since the cottage is quite a long drive from home.

I don't know if anyone else gets this, but when I've been really cold - chilled to the bone cold - it takes me hours and hours to warm up, and as I get warm I get extremely tired, to the point that I am virtually nodding off in my chair. I have no idea why this is!