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!!

With the 4yo you have to decide whether you want this to be the time he learns to be less fussy, in which case, you just give him the same as everyone else and he either eats it or doesn't.

This ^^

Some brilliant suggestions...and yes, it is a different life with everyone home, more meals to provide, and no guarantee that you can plan and get all the ingredients. We have a lot of ‘surprise soup’ - made with whatever is there! Bulked out with pasta, with garlic bread (always a winner) or croutons - which are a great way of using up stale bread, and children do love them, particularly if fried in oil.
One quick and easy tip for feeding babies on solids (think it was from Annabel Karmel) - mashed banana and avocado works really well.

@Noconceptofnormal, the first time anyone “berated” me for how much I was spending on groceries, he’d be doing the bloody shopping himself and suffering the consequences of having no decent meals.

As for the leek, chop it reasonably finely, put it in an ovenproof dish With a knob of butter and some salt if you use it, microwave for about three minutes then mix in some herby cream cheese, sprinkle with grated cheese and bung it in the oven for a bit. I’ve always done leeks like this and everyone eats them happily.

Don't cook twice a day. We have a variation on a sandwich for lunch every single day- an actual sandwich or beans or scrambled egg on toast, and then cook something once a day at tea time.
Make soup with your leftover veg?

You do realise, I hope, that it is you putting pressure on yourself?

There's no need. Get the old man to do meals at weekends and relax, you won't die from not having exactly the nutrition you would like in better times.

Soup Dragon
My mum had 3 children under 4 and was not able to out shopping as and when, we had milk delivered every morning, we had bread van, meat van and veg van came round once a week, once a week my mum would take a shopping list to our local shop and they would deliver for free.
It was not easy, there was no choice, you just got on with it.

Pizza
Hot dogs
Chicken curry
Meat balls and pasta all.done in slow cooker
Jacket spuds
Freezer meal
(Sunday lunch)
Sandwich for lunch
Repeats weekly

Love this genius meal plan from @Healthyandhappy. Not very MN though

Yanbu and I absolutely love cooking and am an excellent cook. I'm finding it knackering and there are only 3 of us.

For the 4 year old just give him the same lunch you know he'll eat every day if he's fussy. For the baby leftovers from last nights tea and just cook as normal in the evening. They don't need 2 cooked meals a day especially if it's not even being eaten

I have a nearly 4 year old and i am not cooking twice a day! There are also 3 adults in the house but I'm the one doing all the cooking as I am the least lazy lol.

Why are you doing this to yourself, it's not necessary.

Our day is like this

Breakfast - either cereal, porridge or a peanut butter & jam sandwich

Morning snack - fruit and or yoghurt

Lunch - ham or chicken wrap with cucumber sticks. Every now and then, I might do burgers or chicken nuggets

Afternoon snack - fruit or yoghurt or crackers or anything else he fancies.

Dinner - what everyone else is having and the only cooked meal of the day. Yesterday was shepherd's pie, today will be meatballs.

Life's too short to be stuck in the kitchen and you can provide nutritious food without cooking.

My trick is to make dinner at lunchtime then all tidy up the kitchen. Then when dinner time comes it feels like a takeaway as all done and kitchen only trashed for 2 meals breakfast and lunch rather than 3

I felt really stressed before I got my shielding delivery.

Now, though I have had an online delivery, I ordered basics for meals, but waited until it had arrived for the actual meal planning, as no point if like you said the mince doesn't arrive.

Once I have then meal planned the pressure is significantly off.

I would also say that your oh should be making some of the meals too if he's at home.

Make one meal an easy meal, salad and sandwich or similar. Noone needs banquets every meal.

For the weaner, I'd say if you make purees or similar batch make and freeze in portion sizes. The finger foods side shouldn't then take any additional time if done as needed.

I was standing in the kitchen doing my umpteen hours of peeling, chopping, prepping, cooking etc etc etc and I thought - "Christ! This was my mother's life!"

:(

First: any experience of weaning, pandemic or not, involves a disproportionate amount of time feeding / cleaning up food.

Second: go with an 80 / 20 rule. Mostly good food, around 3/4 meals can be nutritionally shite if you need a break.

Third: Hope DH is massively involved in clearing up?? If not, that is now his job.

Fourth: repetition is your friend! Kids particularly usually love having the same thing over and over. Get a formula for lunch - ours is basically a sandwich / wrap / bagel with tuna or ham, a load of veg sticks and a protein 'side' either piece of quiche, mini sausages, pork pie, chicken skewers. Most of the sides are shop bought, sometimes I make my own but applying the 80/20 rule means I don't stress about it.

Fifth: saviours for me when weaning we're baking huge trays of roasted veg sticks (carrots, parsnips, potato, sweet potatoes, butternut squash etc) then freezing so I could grab a handful to quickly defrost for each meal.

Rice cakes with 'stuff' smeared on so avocado, cream cheese, peanut butter, grated cheese, tuna mayo, hummus

But the main lesson is to take the pressure off yourself. Buy shortcuts, throw stuff away if you can't find a meal for it, eat pasta pesto / takeaway / beans on toast at least 3 times a week.

Oh and jacket potatoes with low salt / sugar beans / cheese and a side of veg sticks with ship hummus is mega cheap, healthy and easy 😀

Sympathy from me OP, I’m struggling with it too. Ds has autism with the accompanying oral sensory issues and an inability to emotionally regulate when he’s hungry. I’ve ended up cooking separately for him because I don’t want to run out of the things he will eat. But I don’t want to serve them so often he goes off them either. With everyone at home there’s more meals to make and I can’t just do sandwiches for lunch now as I don’t always have enough bread, or meal plan effectively when key ingredients don’t arrive. Keeping track of what’s getting close to its use by date is the difference between having fresh food at the end of two weeks and not.

The mental load is massive at the moment.

We’re treating it like an extended episode of Ready Steady Cook. See what are the ingredients with the least remaining shelf life and combine them into a meal...

We’ve eaten surprisingly well so far, and picky DS(7) hasn’t complained once, and given that he used to cry daily about the horrible disgusting food I would force him to eat (you know, the same stuff he happily ate a week ago), I’m really quite pleased!

OP,

1. You're allowed to do top-up shops during the week. Yes, you should make it as infrequent as possible, but no this isn't an exercise in food purgatory

2. Your husband should be helping. Why are you enabling him to be a man child! Poor example for your DS

3. Find am open takeaway

I’m ancient but back in my day children ate what was put in front of them. It would make your life much simpler if the choice was take it or leave it.

I don’t understand why you’re doing all the food planning and cooking, surely this is a shared task ? Think you need to calm down a bit. No one is going to starve.

You can bung most leftover veg into a soup at the end of the week, then eat it for lunch during the week.

Oakmaiden - dc are 7, 5 and 3. 7 and 5 yo have severely self restricted diets. H is working from home and is in his office 8-7 most days. He doesn’t like touching food.

The problem with not being able to do daily top ups is if someone eats all of the cheese then the meals using cheese are all fucked. So it makes sense for one person to oversee the meals. It’s just cobblers if you are that person.

I make pizza every night for the boys, they only eat my Homemade dough and Sauce. I try to eat plant based for breakfast and lunch. H eats meat with every meal. Breakfast is Ds2 has dippy eggs, ds1 pancakes, dd porridge and scrambled eggs, I usually have bircher or similar, h bacon and egg sandwiches.

It doesn’t help everyone eats at different times. Kids eat breakfast when they get up - which is between 6.30-10.30am so then one will be hungry for lunch at 11.30 and another not till 1. H has 15 min breaks between meetings so may say 2.30on the dot. But that’s too late for everyone else and he likes quite a big meal which no one else does.

I’m laying in bed while H does breakfast for him and the kids as I just can’t face thinking about food anymore. If I was on my own I’d make a big batch of something and live off it all week. I used to love cooking too :(

Just popping in to say I love the designation 'Quarantine Quartermaster' (if not the task). Someone should start a blog.

I think alot of us need to set our expectations lower. Not just us doing the food prep but others in the household. It's not easy to suddenly change. Years ago I used to shop weekly and I made sure I got everything. Also, I only had a small freezer compartment in the fridge (not even a proper deep freeze as such). Things got used in a certain order. Over the years I got into habit of going several times a week. Coupled with someone a bit demanding, cooking has long been a chore. Now, the shopping is back to weekly. If I forget something - tough! Also, it's not going down well, but I've taken to getting him several ready meals a week. Bit expensive, but after years of trying to keep the balls juggling I've let a few drop 😂 😂