Do you hate having to choose whats for dinner every day

[Flowers24]

Every day its the same, every week Monday draws around and i do the weekly shop, maybe its the lockdown life but fed up of it all and just cant think of new ideas all the time, is it just me?

Right I was made redundant on furlough and my organised streak is reappearing.

DS (19) moaned about dinner a few weeks ago, so I said over to you, I will order it and cook it, just tell me what to do.

The best he came up with was baked potatoes.

So I have started a rotation and I will work off that on a very loose rotation.

Thai Beef, either strips or mince, served with a warm teriyaki sauce with loads of garlic and fresh ginger, served with gem lettuce leaves for parcels, sticky rice, fine green beans and topped with pan fried sesame seeds.

Sitrfry from the left over roast, with either noodles or rice, if it is rice throw some egg in and scramble it for egg fried rice.

Salmon fillets, with an orange and lemon zest, new potatoes and green veg.

Salmon fillets with warm teriyaki sauce and sesame seeds, sticky rice or potatoes and veg.

Chicken fajitas

Lemon and organge chicken with chilli sauce through it with noodles.

Curry

Thai green curry

Chicken wrapped in bacon stuffed with garlic and cheese pan fried and served with new pots and veg.

Spanish chicken, just chicken in a roasting dish, loads of garlic, cherry tomatoes, and white wine.

Lamb chops with a whiskey and orange marmalade coating.

Nigellas Greeky shepherds pie, served Tesco finest feta crumbled on the side.

Ordinary shepherds pie

Spag bol
Chilli
Meatballs
Cottage pie

Smoked salmon with onions double cream and pasta.

This week there is some cream to be used up, so I will slow roast tomatoes and onions and combine with pasta.

Sea bass, with prawns,, mussels, squid in a tomato and fennel sauce with dipping bread.

Scallops with black pudding with pea puree.

Can't think of anymore at the moment.

Yes. DP is trying to be healthy and doesn't want anything I suggest, it's painful, especially because he calls me when he finishes work and asks what's for tea.

We have a list of meals and the default is to have the same meals in the same order round and round. We have a lunch list (stuff the kids like) and a dinner list (stuff we like). Each week I just check where we are in the list and populate the week starting at that number: e.g. number 4-10 then start at 1 again. If there is anything new or special we want I can swap that in, but I don't have to. So we get all the advantages of a system with the option of novelty whenever we fancy it. I usually do different veg in the same formats but do have a go-to set.

For dinners, four days a week we have one of: Dal, falafel wraps, soup, lentil bol - all batch cooked from the freezer. Then we only have to plan and cook three exciting fancy expensive meals a week. How much do you really relish a weeknight supper anyway?

I do the planning, DH does the shopping, we split the cooking about 2:1 me:him. We never have to ask what's for dinner because it's written down.

Also means that now I'm pregnant and can't be doing with thinking about food too much, I just point DH at the laptop and the usual food plan continues on without my input. He cooks what's written down. When he panic realised he was about to go and do the shop and I hadn't done the meal plan, he just decided to do the same as last week (didn't even have to write a new shopping list! That's resourceful!)

I don't know why people flog themselves to death making "new" and "interesting" meals when it's obvious they don't want to.

I like choosing what we have. I like researching recipes and putting my own together from them all. Sometimes I can't be arsed and we go out or have takeaway.

DH rarely has a definite preference on what he would like. Left to his own devices he'd eat pizza 9 times out of 10.

@Famousinlove

Yes. DP is trying to be healthy and doesn't want anything I suggest, it's painful, especially because he calls me when he finishes work and asks what's for tea.

To which I would reply I have no idea, what do you suggest that will fit in with your healthy eating regime ?

Repeat ad nauseum until he starts to think a bit earlier than on the way home.

@wavey123 I shop once a week.

Veg and salad should last that long, but avoid buying pre-prepared salads. Keep lettuces in their plastic bags in the salad drawer of your fridge so they don't go limp. The same for fennel/celery. We buy potatoes, onions and carrots in 25kg sacks and keep them in the garage during the winter. They last eight weeks quite happily.

Put all your fruit in a fruit bowl and check it each morning when you do breakfast - just remove anything that looks like it might be going a bit too soft.

So boring.DH and I share the cooking, so it’s only 3-4 days a week, but my GOD it’s dull. DS is fussy, DD has recently decided she is vegetarian and me & DH are low carb, so it’s such a faff thinking of things we can all eat or that are easily adaptable.

I miss the days of being a single working woman and happily scoffing a quick eggs on toast or houmous/pitta/salad.

I am attempting chicken risotto from scratch this evening, if it doesn't work, our fall back is very garlicky butter with linguine and fresh coriander, or tinned tomatoes with loads of garlic reduced down and served with linguine or spaghetti and coriander.

Oh and Friday night is takeaway night so no one has to think on a Friday.

Yes. So few meals that everyone will eat and they are the classic, unexciting type of meals. Nobody ever has a new idea of something they would like to try. They never want to try my new ideas. I'm this close to just bunging them chicken nuggets and chips every day and making myself food that makes me happy instead.

[quote Mintjulia]@wavey123 I shop once a week.

Veg and salad should last that long, but avoid buying pre-prepared salads. Keep lettuces in their plastic bags in the salad drawer of your fridge so they don't go limp. The same for fennel/celery. We buy potatoes, onions and carrots in 25kg sacks and keep them in the garage during the winter. They last eight weeks quite happily.

Put all your fruit in a fruit bowl and check it each morning when you do breakfast - just remove anything that looks like it might be going a bit too soft.[/quote]
But where do you keep it? Or do people have massive fridges?

There's only two of us, we don't put most fruit in the fridge, use some frozen veg, eat far less fruit and veg than I dare admit to on Mumsnet and even we can't get anywhere near a full week's worth in the fridge and have room for other things.

@Wavey123

For those who only do 1 weekly shop, how do you keep things like veg and salad fresh? Or do you do top up shops?

I love meal planning and cooking, like a PP said it's my favourite chore.

I do one big shop which arrives on a Saturday. If salad like rocket is involved that gets eaten in the first few days. Cauliflower / cabbage / greens will happily live in the fridge for a week. Friday is always leftovers night.

If anything arrives that looks like it's on its last legs and won't survive until I need it, I try to cook and freeze it. If you get robust salad it will be fine - cucumber, tomatoes, little gem lettuce, beetroot, salad onions etc.

Sunday dinner starts with a roast. we had gammon. Lots left over.
Monday - lasagne, salad and garlic bread.
Tuesday - Creamy garlic pasta with the left over gammon.
Wednesday - Pork chops and veg.
Thursday - Omelette
Friday - Take out/fake away
Saturday - Make a loaf with the bread maker and picky bits.

Plan ahead. I do the planning and shopping. I look at the week ahead. I'm home this week, but last week I was working, so it was a different menu plan. it's a good way to save money too as you know what you are going to eat and use.

So much! Cooking was so easy in my 20s, before DC. Just whatever I fancied. I loathe organising meals.

It's the not really being able to eat random bits and pieces as a meal that I miss - so on my own, might eat some toast and honey while steaming broccoli to cover in dressing, and also snack on bits of cheese and nuts or something. Balanced enough, but not something you can serve up to others.

Yes!

After previously cooking everything from scratch we’ve given up recently in favour of convenience food (DH is a trained chef so never thought I’d see the day). Cooking just feels too exhausting with our 2 year old around, us both working and me pregnant with twins!

Our (online) food shop this week was bits like-pre-made salmon fish cakes, lasagne for two (both taste the difference), bags of salad! Some sausages so I can chuck on a Coleman’s casserole. Then we have spaghetti in the cupboard for our basic carbonara recipe. Also a chicken in the bag, with veg and auntie Bessies roasties/ Yorkshire’s (honestly I can’t believe DH is eating these but they’ve definitely come along way from what I remember when my mum gave us them).

Oh and lunch is basically convent garden soup (mushroom/ carrot and coriander/ leek and potato).

I can’t even be bothered to batch cook these days. No way am I wasting a whole half day of my weekend anymore! Fucking no way. One day I will enjoy cooking again but for now I just need an easy life.

Yes ds is fussy and dh works night so needs something that can be reheated when he gets up. We have started using gousto as I was fed up cooking the same thing every week

YES!!!!

I absolutely hate it. All 3 kids are fussy little buggers but in different ways. DS1 is a pescatarian, DS2 and DD won't eat anything that is 'mixed' - so no lasagne, no shepherd's pie, no spag bol.

I find it so bloody difficult to cook anything that everyone likes - the only winners are roast dinner (with a veggie option for me and DS1) and macaroni cheese. You can't eat roast dinner and mac n cheese every bloody day.

I try to meal plan as well to reduce spending/waste etc but that is even more depressing when I'm writing down all these incredibly dull meals again and again and again...

Bleurgh.

Too many bloodys. Sorry about that. Apparently I'm quite cross about this.

This is me for sure. "I don't know" he says. But then I cook something which makes him wretch and it ruins everything for everyone

I couldn't live with this, that's appalling

OMFG yes!! It’s one of the things I find most difficult; the constant onslaught of meals to be planned, shopped for and prepared. Tbf I hated it before lockdown, but it’s become magnified. It’s tedious, and then some bright spark will object and I’ve got steam coming out of my ears!

DH does our shopping and meal planning as he is the one who can never decide what he wants to eat. I'm about to start maternity leave so I'll start doing the shopping and meal planning again then - dreading it!

So so so fucking bored of it. I made DH do it yesterday, we will be eating freezer food all week. He's happy with that. I'm not so the onus is back on me again.

Even thinking about mince makes me want to cry.

GOUSTO.

@EmbarrassingMama

GOUSTO.

We only did the first one because of the cost, but even that one week we got 3 new recipes that we now cook regularly. I wish we could afford to do it every week!