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?

One thing that helped with trying to find nice cooked lunch ideas as well is the Instant Pot I bought. It's amazing! I've made lots of soups, risottos etc and I regularly make a batch of hidden vegetable sauce as my kids STILL won't knowingly eat most vegetables. So that's going on the pizzas tonight!

Yep, I hate it. I have 5 DC, the baby is obviously easy and happy with whatever you give him. Toddler has decided to be fussy recently so he picks and chooses what he likes day to day. My eldest has been a fussy eater since he was around 4 (he’s now 11) so there’s lots of food he just refuses to eat. DH makes things more difficult by insisting we don’t have pasta every week or by saying ‘nah I don’t fancy that’ whenever I suggest things. I hate meal planning with a passion, it just feels impossible.

@dropdeadhorse i am in the fortunate position of early retirement so can happily spend a couple of hours looking for inspiration and doing the planning. I have the weekly menus for around 10 weeks worth with a shopping list attached so rotate each one and once the initial grunt work is done it makes things easy. I do however get with kids to feed its much much harder and we don't eat until 7pm which wont work for a lot of people, having said that most of the food i cook can be done fairly quickly or in a slow cooker, the chopping of bloody onions and veg takes the longest and i sometimes get fed up of that 😀 i didn't eat this well when my boys were little so i feel your pain.

Yanbu!
I hated it but we've sort of sussed it now and have got a kind of rough plan.

Monday's - dinner kit from supermarket as it's one of my busiest days of the week. Tonight we're having beef stir fry, add to wok and cook. Easy.

Tuesday's are Mexican night; fajitas, tacos, burritos, quesadillas, enchiladas, chilli con carne on rotation.

Wednesday, some sort of one pot meal, stew, casserole or something with mash and peas, sausage/ toad in the hole/ chicken thighs/ pie/ etc. In the summer this is something with salad chicken/ jacket potato/ quiche etc.

Thursday something with pasta/Italian

Friday's nuggets/ fish fingers/veggie fingers/ steak/ sausage/ fish/ with chips

Saturday, rotation of pizza and wedges, burger/ hotdog and fries, chicken wings, ribs, homemade kebab, homemade sweet and sour chicken, homemade chicken chow mein or occasionally a takeaway.

Sunday roast dinner either with all the trimmings or salad if it's a summer's day

H I hate this. I do it every Saturday, plan for the week, picking easier meals for days I’m busier at work - I have my week’s appointments booked so I know what’s happening. DS(12) has started getting very into cooking and become more adventurous so he & I have been buying new cookery books and experimenting which has made it a bit more interesting and easier. DH and my 2 DDs let us get on with it. In my euromillions winning fantasies I get a cook!

I have discovered frozen chopped onion, frozen chopped ginger etc and its made my life that little bit easier. Dh insists on sauces made from scratch no jars so on less thing for me to not chop!

I've got a hello fresh 50% off box just to take away the bore that is thinking about it.

Dh insists on sauces made from scratch no jars so on less thing for me to not chop!

If my DH tried insisting on that he'd be making himself beans on toast.

@Flowers24 chopped onions are amazing aren’t they? Also I took it one step further, get some large ice cube trays, batch cook some sauces them freeze them. Once frozen put the ice cubes in a zip lock bag.

Omg yes. Just like I hate doing the laundry, taking the bins etc.

Chopped onions FTW though!

Ish.

I hate the faff of trying to come up with something to eat/plan a meal every day.

Then I realise I'd loathe it if someone else took over and I just had to eat whatever I was dished up, whether I fancied it or not.

The ability to decide what I fancy for tea and make it for everyone else just about outweighs the pain of having to do so.

@hellcatspangle

Dh insists on sauces made from scratch no jars so on less thing for me to not chop!

If my DH tried insisting on that he'd be making himself beans on toast.

To be fair he normally makes all the pasta sauces but cannot at the moment so i have taken over (but sneaked some jars in sometimes!)

Yes! It's an on going joke in this house 'are we having chicken or fish tonight' 🙄

Yes it is always the women who do this, plan the meals, shop for it 'thats why mum's gone to Iceland' for example.
Why do we have all this stress?!

OP, I feel your pain!

We made some changes a year ago and it's been so much better. I have a list of roughly 50 meals that we all like and that are pretty simple to make, divided into red meat, poultry, veggie, fish etc, and a note saying where the recipe is (if a recipe is needed). It's stuck on the inside of a cupboard door and we meal plan on Sunday night, making the shopping list as we go. Shop on Monday, occasionally go back towards the end of the week if needed.

Honestly, it's transformed my life. We eat better (more variety) and seem to save money not going back to the shops so often.

I still get that 'Uugh' feeling when it's time to meal plan but I make myself do it (and always get DH involved) and once the weekly menu and shopping list is done I feel a huge sense of relief.

I also batch cook A LOT, so there is almost always veggie chilli, casserole, shepherd's pie, lentil dahl etc in the freezer and that helps.

@Flowers24

I have discovered frozen chopped onion, frozen chopped ginger etc and its made my life that little bit easier. Dh insists on sauces made from scratch no jars so on less thing for me to not chop!

If anyone was insisting but not doing I’d be telling them to do it themselves.

M&S ready meals are a lifesaver - we have one at least once a week. And Aldi do a few decent dishes, too, much cheaper. There's no shame in taking a day off and bunging a ready-made meal in the microwave or oven.

Yes! That’s why I’ve started getting Gousto boxes/ Hello Fresh boxes on rotation.

Why is it predominantly women still left holding all the responsibility for this huge domestic task?

Well in my case it's because dh works long hours in a hard job and I work very part time. Dh absolutely loves cooking and often cooks at the weekends and holidays, but I'm at home more to do the shopping and weekdsy cooking. He'd happily meal plan and go to the supermarket at the weekend but it seems silly to spend weekend time on that when I have plenty of time to do it during the week!

My life changer was when I insisted each of the four DCs (no DH here) make dinner/supper one night a week. This includes choosing the meal. When they were young I would help/teach them. Now the youngest is 10 he can make a meal himself.

The nicest part is the chatting and one on one time in the kitchen. They also need to clean up the kitchen and take the bin out /empty dishwasher /feed dog etc that day.

An inadvertent outcome was that they become more respectful of my cooking efforts and quite proud of their own skills.

I make everyone choose a meal for the week. There are 5 of us so that’s 5 meals, we usually have a roast on the weekend and then a takeaway in Friday night. Life has been so much easier since doing this.
I sometimes slightly change the meal around a bit and they can’t always pick the same meal or have unhealthy foods such as freezer food or chips etc.

DH tends to cook the evening meal while I do bedtime, so as long as there’s food in the house it’s not too bad. We’ve switched over entirely to online shopping so it’s generally quite easy but we do end up eating the same meals on rotation - usually stir fries or curry, sometimes tacos. One night a week we have a frozen pizza as a night off from cooking. It could be a lot worse, but it’s still a bit of a drag.

I hate it, my kids also dont like home cooked food very much. I cooked loads of fresh food for them when they were younger, so I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing I could have done differently. My husband works shifts but is happy to eat anything, in fact we joke that he eats out of the bin. He does have a fondness for Heinz soups and Past n Sauce and similar. We eat a lot of pasta, sometimes with a homemade tuna sauce, sometimes with pesto and sausages, sausage sandwiches, fresh pasta with a tomato sauce, usuallly served with garlic bread, sweet & sour chicken and stir fried veg with a jar of sauce. Often serve the ready meals with roasted veg. I have just eaten a ready done Steak Pie with roasted veg. Now and again I cook a roast dinner or bolognese or chilli with pouches of microwave rice. Once or twice a week we have a take away. Yes I have given up and I no longer feel bad about it. I used to love cooking different things, but the negative feedback got to be soul destroying. I also no longer have the time or energy. My boys (now 11 and 14) often prefer to sort themselves out.

Yes! I like cooking a lot but DH is making lockdown cooking a nightmare as he is on an on-off diet where some days he eats and others says that he only wants "something small". I let him sort his food out now and I cook for DD and I - if he wants it, he can have it. It's just annoying.