To be so stressed and exhausted by pandemic meal planning

[Featherstep]

Ok so I know we're lucky to have enough food and are all healthy.

But it's week 4 of lockdown and I am just so fed up of planning, sourcing, cooking 2 meals a day for 4 people, all with different preferences! Everyone's around all day, 4 year old DS is really fussy, and 7 month old baby is newly weaned and ravenous.

With shopping options so limited I want to make sure everything is used up in the best possible way... I did meal plan a bit pre-Covid but not to this extent and frequently went for top up shops (say for curry paste if we wanted curry.)

It just feels like a large portion of my brain is spent thinking about what to cook, making food and clearing it up (from under baby's highchair, especially). And doing creative things to make the leftovers last/ turn them into baby's next meal.

DH tells me to relax and not go crazy. He just doesn't get how tiring the mental load is. I am by far the better and more resourceful cook so I do take up almost all the cooking duties- I know this is my problem. But anyone else out there want to just share the frustration?? I just want to go eat a McDonald's by myself and not have to do a mental spreadsheet of how best to use up everything in the veg box!!

Wow! The stress from meal planning........go and watch a news bulletin showing an NHS nurse coming off shift, and then discuss how hard our lives are having to plan nutritious meals.

Yup it's not always easy to plan meals, but by comparison to other people our life really is a piece of cake, why not see challenges such a s meal planning as just that, a challenge. I'm enjoying coming up with new meal ideas, based on current meal fashions, and those from historical recipes particularly from the war years

It is ridiculously time consuming! I agree! However I couldn’t cook before and there has been a certain pleasure in learning. I f’ing hate the cleaning up though!

I've found that apart from having to queue to get in, our weekly shop is pretty much back to normal. I plan the weekly menus so we share the cooking. Get four year old involved as they are more likely to eat what they helped make. Jars of baby food are great.

My house is either cereal or toast breakfast
Lunch is - toasties, sandwich, pizza wrap

Can snack on fruit but generally don't as they don't really like fruit

Tea - 1 meal for all with possible slight adaption. Like tonight is chicken curry. One doesn't like curry so he gets same meat and veg and I make quick sauce he likes

@SallyB392 we spent all day baking a birthday cake for my son and making our own pasta for tea and then using it for ritolo. We just sipped some wine with the music on...it was enjoyable. Meal planning isnt that difficult and we have more time to do it with DH furloughed!

Lots of us have less time though.

School dinners and after school club covered a lot of Monday to Friday food here. Trying to work and feed a challenging (and violent) fussy child isn't in any way enjoyable.

I am in exactly the same position, with kids roughly the same age, and a OH who does not stop eating and is a really fussy eater too.

I am finding the mental load of it real hard too. The planning, the making, the clearing up.

I actually make 4 different breakfasts, 4 different lunches and 4 different dinners. And also getting food delivered from 4 different places to cover all of our needs.

It's really exhausting and stressful.

Also I have done hello fresh before and it was good but they regularly oases out ingredients, recipe cards and about 30% of the time they delivered to the wrong address

@novacaneforthepain interesting. We used HelloFresh for quite a while before switching to Mindful Chef and I found them really good, no delivery issues at all and only 1 missing ingredient in maybe 30 boxes. I don’t think they ever missed out a recipe card, but all the recipes are online anyway. I still rate them; the switch to MC was just because I felt their recipes had a bit more variety.

@SallyB392 there’s always one. Just because someone has it worse than you doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to complain about something that you, personally, are finding difficult. The exception is complaining directly to someone who has things much worse, but then I am sure that is why OP posted about it on here rather than grumbling to the checkout operator in Tesco or a passing nurse...

nova I could hug you. I'm doing lots of separate meals too. If I don't, DD won't eat it and then I've got a meltdown to deal with.
I tried to convince her to eat plain risotto yesterday, that failed and she had a crappy macaroni cheese ready meal at 9pm instead.

@sally - when is your vlog documenting all this coming out then?! You could calll it “Wartime recipes revisited, with Sally”!

@SallyB392 well, if we are all better if than those in WW2, we should not really be allowed to discuss a single thing

This is a site for people to discuss the big and small things in life

Why don’t you come off your high horse for a bit

Sorry if this has been answered, but what’s for lunch then? We just had poached eggs on toast - I wouldn’t call that cooking and it’s no effort, even though I’m not the best cook. Sometimes it’s jacket potato’s or just a sandwich. Or yesterday’s leftovers in the microwave. I don’t think I ever spend more than 5 or 10 mins preparing lunch.

We had veggie burger with salad; DS ate ham, tomato and cheese while DH made the burger and salad and I toasted buns and poured a drink for everyone. DS then tucked into half a burger bun and a little veggie burger as his dessert while we ate. (It takes him 45 minutes or so to eat a full meal, so we often start him off on bits at lunch while we make our food to prevent us all from being in the kitchen too long).

@ArgumentativeAardvaark I do really rate the food and the process. It was great! I think I actually used them when they initially set up so there may have been a few teething problems.

@megletthesecond yes! That's the same for me! I would always try and get her to eat a normal meal with us before resorting to a microwave meal or some other crap. But now I haven't got enough food to try things out I am just feeding her whatever I know she will eat.

I am such a rubbish cook also and so stressed about making anyone ill in these stressful times 😩

I totally totally understand op I absolutely cannot stand having to plan food and I don’t think my DH ever appreciates the time it takes (or how unhelpful it when you ask for ideas and all you get is “anything”-ahhhh!) I now have Hello Fresh and practically cry with gratitude every week when it is delivered. Since lockdown I have upped it from just for me and DH to DCs too and although they are a bit fussy they have got used to it (they are older than your kids so have been easier to persuade) if you can afford it (and if they are taking on new customers) I totally recommend. it is brilliant even if you just did it for you and DH it would cut down some of your planning time

I have massively lowered the bar for cooking. Before, I was pretty relaxed about what the kids ate, as they were good eaters at nursery/school. But now I am going for zero waste, and sticking to the handful of meals I know they will eat happily. It's a bit dull for me and DH, but we are having a weekly takeaway to make up for it.

I don’t think my DH ever appreciates the time it takes (or how unhelpful it when you ask for ideas and all you get is “anything”

THIS ^

In Spades . . . .

Didn't anyone eat before lockdown?
I've been making meals for the family for the last 30 years, Dh cooks too, but only in the last 7 years since he semi retired.
It's not rocket science, I make some veg (usually two) and some meat, plonk it on a plate and eat. Tonight was pork chops apple sauce and green beans, and cauliflower cheese.
Sometimes it's cottage pie, or Dh likes to make pizza or nachos.
Lunches are things like egg on toast, beans on toast, for me it'll be crackers and tuna or cheese.
Nothing has to be fancy with six million weird ingredients. People put themselves under too much pressure.

A lot of people have DCs who eat breakfast and lunch elsewhere every day, and a lot of people eat their own bought lunch out too, leaving just dinner to deal with but even then, not every day for many because they will have a takeaway or something from the frozen section in the supermarket.

It's the decision making about every single meal that imposes a burden that wasn't there before, as well as working around the finicky eating of five or six people and avoiding heading to the shops and potentially getting a lethal virus every second day.

People are complaining and rightly so that on top of being expected to wfh, women are also expected to produce meals everyone will enjoy daily. Other household members seem not to understand at all what is involved while expecting women to do the steep learning curve involved.

I don’t understand why people feel the need to cook different dishes for an evening meal.
Everyone has food preferences but if it means eat or don’t...
I’m still trying to get my head around parents eating shepherd’s pie but children won’t eat it so parent also has to cook chicken nuggets and chips.

It's mostly the avoiding shopping thing. Before Corona if we didn't have something needed/wanted for a meal I'd just go to the shop or DH would go in on the way home from work, or we'd say sod it and pick up fish and chips/Chinese on impulse without phoning ahead and booking for a slot in 2 hours or so.

Now we're having to be more organised about what we buy so we have all the components including veg/carbs with dates that work for their planned uses. Plus still random shortages of things making detailed meal planning more complicated.