Fed up of cooking and meal planning - HELP

[YukoandHiro]

I have a 3yo and a 3 week old. The thing I'm finding hardest about the adjustment to two kids plus the lockdown situation we're all in is constantly thinking about and making food. I'm so fed up and out of ideas.

DH works shifts so we tend to eat later once DD3 is in bed.

What quick and easy lunches and dinners do you make for your toddlers? Anything that saves time/thought but is simple and healthy very, very welcome

Bump?

• Left overs from the night before...I sometimes double an evening recipe especially for freezing left overs portions :)
• Pizza rolls; puff pastry, marinara sauce (I make.a huge batch and freeze it in portion, can also use it for pasta or you could use a jar) and cheese rolled up sliced and baked.
• Beans on toast
• Soup
• hummus and veggie sticks and pitta bread
• cheese and crackers, sticks of cucumber
• jacket potato with various filings

Congratulations on your new arrival.

Congrats on your new baby.

I made lots of stuff in the mornings with baby in sling that would sit in the slow cooker. So chilli, stew etc.

Macaroni cheese
Bolognese
Pasta mixed with creme fraiche and smoke salmon as a treat

Slow cooker is a good idea. I was given one for my birthday earlier this year but with so much going on I haven't tried it yet. Will get it out and give it a go.

Love the pizza roll ideas. I should definitely try to do snacky/picnic teas on the days she goes to nursery. She's a bit picky as well (with egg and dairy allergy) which I'm sure contributes to me feeling stressed out by it all.

Any other ideas welcome...

gousto 10 min meals have been a lifesaver for us.

Are they expensive @Graffitiqueen? 10 mins sounds perfect in terms of timing :)

I gave up in September and now get Gousto 7 nights a week. It isn't cheap but it saves me so much stress and we are having a much wider variety of meals now.

Services like Gousto and Hello Fresh tend to be very food value for the first month if you sign up with a referral code (happy to give you a Gousto one if you want it). If you were savvy you could probably get a few months at an affordable rate by doing a Gousto deal for a month followed by a Hello Fresh deal for a month followed my a Mindful Chef deal for a month etc

I'm in the same boat and don't have many suggestions ok afraid, just sympathy!
However a friend of mine says she gets by by having a six week menu that's she does on rotation.
So if you get some magical down time you can write a menu/guide for 6 weeks and then repeat, or wrote another one so you repeat every 12 weeks etc. Seemed like a brilliant idea to me

Slow cooker is a life saver. I hate chopping onions at 7am but come dinner time I'm so so relieved I did!

For toddler lunches, my son (nearly 2) just likes really simple stuff - a wrap/crackers/bread with peanut butter, cut up cheese, cut up grapes, yoghurt, cucumber

Easy dinners I'd say:
Chicken, veg in slow cooker with gravy

Gammon is slow cooker all day - crusty bread

Baked potatoes/ sweet potato in oven all afternoon then you can use different fillings

Pasta - I sometimes freeze a cheese sauce and use that

Tortilla pizza - tomato paste, mozzarella and toppings under the grill

Tray bake - salmon/chicken etc with chopped up veg, olive oil and herbs in oven

Get the pinch of nom recipe books, they have loads of quick healthy meals you can batch cook

I feel your pain. I was a proper foodie before kids. Now we have ready made pizza way more than I am comfortable admiring
Our quick and easy go to’s are:
Bolognese (freeze portions)
Sausages, broccoli, rice and peas
Pork cutlets veg rice
Salmon, noodles, veg
Broccoli pasta and cheese
Shepard’s pie (Batch cook and freeze portions)
Chicken drumsticks rice and veg
Hamburgers (good quality) Cous cous and vepasta, butter bean and fresh tomato soup

Etc. All very boring. Oh and did I mention I’m vegetarian

Oh and lunches tend to be eggs (think your daughter is allergic?) or wraps with various avocado and cheese and ham fillings

Do a two or three week menu and just repeat it. Same shopping list. Do it online. Nobody realis s it’s the same things. It takes all the thinking out of it.

Order cook, home made food you can pop in the oven.

Favourite lunch at that age was happy faces, basically a picnic type lunch made to look like a face. Ham for mouth, tomato for nose boiled egg for eyes etc. Changed depending on what was in the fridge.

Cut up some fruit into little bags and freeze. Takes 10 minutes to defrost if cut into toddler size. Alpro and koko yogurts are a favourite of mines who also has a dairy and egg allergy.

Make a batch of bolognaise sauce. Great with meatballs, pasta, quorn.

Also bulgar wheat couscous - takes 3 minutes sitting in a covered bowl of boiling water to cook. Great pasta alternative and my almost 2 year old prefers it to any other whole grain.

I buy a tonne of frozen veg too - saves so much faffing about.

Fridge tea for the kids- basically anything that is kept in the fridge. I like to think of it as a modern day ploughmans...cab include any of the following:

• humus
• chopped veg
• falafel
• bit of ham
• cheese
• frittata that you get in the chilled bit 8f supermarket
• sausage
• pitta bread
• olives

Etc

Highly recommend hello fresh to help get out of a rut. They have good introductory offers on. They also have some recipes on their website

@YukoandHiro it's obviously going to be more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, but we waste much less food, and you can eat more interesting food without having to buy loads of fancy ingredients that you'll never use again. Think it's about £47 for four meals for four. Don't have to do for four though.

I find not having to think about meal planning such a relief though!

I can give you a code for 50% off your first box, then 30% off for the next 2.

No ideas but just to say you're not alone. I have a 5 year old and 6 week old and am so fed up of dinner times. He's so fussy and once he's in bed we're rushing round doing other jobs so trying to all eat together.
Tonight we had soup; heinz tomato for him with bread and glorious dahl for us with rice (im doing slimming world).

Main meal as a late lunch then weetabix or toast for dinner. Or packed lunch for dinner.

As others have said slow cooker is a Godsend. It saves me so much time. I cook almost every meal in it. Chilli, stews, spag bol, sticky toffee pudding. I often cook extra at dinner to either eat the next day or freeze

In the morning when I am making my older children's packed lunches. I also make my own (WFH at the moment) and DD aged 3 if she is home. I find this saves me time.

Most mornings when I am doing the pack ups I also chop up any left over veg, onion and a stock cube and put the soup maker on.

I also fill up DDs water bottle for the morning if she isn't at nursery and make my self a hot flask of tea that I can take into my home office.

DD likes 'bits' on her plate, so for lunch she will often have home made soup, a mini wm bread roll with chicken cut into two, cucumber sticks, baby tomatoes and plain yoghurt. For a snack she likes cut up apple, strawberries or orange segments with a handful of dry cheerios.

I do not cook on Saturdays. This is the day when the children can choose what they want for their dinner. Eg a happy meal. DH and I will have a take away.

I always have a bag of frozen onion and frozen veg in the freezer, because I cannot waste time always chopping onion.

I always keep a few cook and m and s ready meals in the freezer for both adults and children and pad them out with veg or salad for those days when I just cannot be bothered to cook.

Mine had to take lunch into nursery and never liked a sandwich, so used to do a big pot of pasta at the weekend and freeze it (pasta with the sauce) and just defrost/slap in the microwave.

But honestly I'd go for picky plates or leftovers from the night before, you don't want to be faffing with a newborn. Congrats by the way!

Thanks everyone, there are some brilliant ideas here. I'm always trying to find the time to plan a bit better (would definitely help to take the stress out of it) but never seem to get round to it

If you can't find the time to sit down and make a menu, make a 'Meals' album on your phone and everytime you make a meal that your proud of or fits your criteria for easy/nutritious etc just take a photo and save it in the album. Eventually you'll have built up a bank of meals your happy to make and then you can use that to start meal planning. Good luck!