Fed up of cooking twice a day!

[Scienceisnotopinion]

Need some tips/ideas. All of us, Dh and kids, are home for lunch and dinner. Will often make soups that last for dinner too, but they eat a LOT and often there will not be enough left and will still have to cook some side dish or something.
Anyone more organised then me that can help? I try to have a balanced week, meat fish veggy dishes. Thanks!

You're making this way too complicated OP

Just cook more of what you make for dinner and serve it for lunch the next day

Or cook double portions for lunch and serve the rest for dinner the next day

DH reheats pasta in a sive. I don't eat pasta but he seems quite happy with it.

It can always be turned into pasta salads with mayo and different vegetables/pesto etc.

A red onion bagel (or two!) with sliced cheddar cheese and roasted red peppers from a jar, then pannini pressed, with tinned tomato soup for dipping is my lunch of the gods! Toasted sandwiches, bagels or baguettes are not boring at all and are the perfect lunch food with soup.

I also often make extra lentil taco mix and have that as a burrito lunch the next day. Also make an extra veggie cottage pie (wouldn’t freeze it as it ruins it IMO, keep in fridge for 2/3 days) and extra bean chilli to eat on its own with tortilla chips and cheese. Gluten free pasta (less heavy) with pesto, fresh tomatoes and cheese is another quick one.

Meat with main meal is enough.

I don’t know how you can decide what to have if you’re cooking two full meals a day. I can hardly decide what to have just for dinner most days.

@Scienceisnotopinion

I would eat salads but feel its not too filling especially for growing boys. But might give it a try

When cooking the night before, cook extra pasta/rice/new potatoes and then chill in the fridge. Add to the salad, and make sure there is enough protein to fill them up. A piece of sweet chilli salmon with potato salad & other salad stuff is very filling.

It's entirely possible to not cook and still have a non processed lunch.

Ever heard of salads?

Loads of different options.

Most days I'll have a salad + a protein for lunch. Tuna, egg, chicken, ham & coleslaw.

Can change the veg, protein, dressings, cheese on top etc.

But then if sandwiches get boring I'm guessing you'll say salads do too.

Also a vote for a Slow Cooker here .Lasagne /spag bol on to cook all day .Assemble eve(with jar of white sauce ).Just add to fresh tagliatelle for a quick meal .Sandwiches or toasted snacks are often all a poor family may get all day FFS!

Since you talk about other family members arriving home, and ‘we are not sandwich people’ I assumed your kids are old enough to make a sandwich. If so, have yourself a salad if you dont like sandwiches and salad sounds good to you. If it’s not enough for them they can make themselves a ham cheese sandwich or pb toast to fill the gaps.

Cook a very large pot of Bolognese, let it cool and freeze it in portions. Then you only need to defrost it and add spaghetti.

Same with sausage casserole. (Without the spaghetti)

Same with curry. Cook a large portion and buy some naan bread or garlic bread.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if these have already been suggested.

Ok, so you prep the potatoes for a leek and potato soup. At the same time, you prep the potatoes for the mashed potato for another meal. You can cook and mash it, and put it in an oven proof dish and reheat it the next day for tea.

You make a lentil soup. You wash extra lentils and cook them into the base for a lentil bolognase or lentil cottage pie at the same time.

You roast one pan of veg for roasted veg soup and another to combine with cous cous.

Etc. Is this what you mean?

Invest in a big slow cooker, it’ll help with the batch cooking.

As you’re so fond of soup, probably easier to cook a full evening meal and save leftovers to make soup from for lunch (e.g. if you do a big tray of roasted Mediterranean vegetables with eg couscous for dinner, use the leftover veg plus some tomatoes to make a soup).

Things like stew, bolognese sauce, chilli concarne, beef chilli , meatballs can easily be started in a pan then cooked in the slow cooker for an afternoon. You can change up the sides, eg wraps/ guacamole for dinner then rice for lunch.

“Sautéed martyr on toast seems you dish of choice OP if I'm being honest”

This.

Quick lunches we have:
Jacket pots with various fillings
Toasties
Beans & cheese on toast
Soup
Omelette

Leftovers

your best bet is probably to cook at dinner time, cook double the amount, then freeze/fridge whats left for lunch the following day, and supplement it with some salad stuff.

Like i'll make lasagne and serve it with chips, then the next day will put it out for lunch with some side salad and garlic bread.

I'm also a fan of 'put it in the oven and leave it' food, so will eat jacket potatoes, steamed salmon (brilliant wrapped in foil and cooked on 180 for 20 mins and serve with sliced tomatoes and lettuce)

Slow cookers are brilliant for batch cooking :)

Last week dh had covid so was home each day for lunch, he was a bit 🙄 that the lunch offer was still a sandwich the same as he'd take to work. We have 3 dc and I do not cook for lunch, only for dinner. No one needs more than one hot meal a day.

Oh and pasta salad/salad (can be made up and last afew in fridge)

How about making the pasta sauce in one big batch and then just cooking the pasta fresh each day. We would make pasta caponata on Monday setting aside extra sauce, then on Tuesday and Wednesday lunch just cook pasta and reheat some of the sauce. We also generally make dinners that will do two nights. So tonight we are making curry. Tomorrow night we can just reheat the curry and cook fresh rice.

I am more than happy to eat the same meal (leftovers) several days in a row - but even I can't imagine eating the same meal for dinner that i had for lunch

I have discovered frozen jacket potatoes in Iceland. Put them in the microwave for 4 minutes and they taste oven baked. I make stir fries with rice for dinner and have a smaller second helping the next day with a jacket potato for lunch.

Also highly recommend a multi cooker power pot if you don't have one already to batch cook, and tray bakes can be prepped in advance and cooked later

Or just do what most people do and come up with a range of meals that are either no cooking or like 10 minutes of cooking, surely that's easier than constantly batch cooking and organising everything to the nth degree

In this house for example:

Couscous/tabbouleh with lots of veg
Wraps with hummus, feta, red pepper
Falafel in pita with garlic sauce
Scrambled eggs on toast
Sauteed mushrooms with blue cheese on ciabatta bread
Tomato, mozzarella, pesto, as sandwich or salad

etc
etc

Don't see how that's more boring than soup all the time, a meal is not more virtuous just because you spent an hour cooking it

I do as much batch cooking / prep etc as possible. I even batch cook rice and pasta and put it into big tubs to save my sanity. I rinse both rice and pasta before storage to keep it moist. Rice can be heated (very thoroughly) just on the plate. If you’re reheating pasta alone and not part of a meal, it works best to place in a bowl, cover with boiling water and microwave for a minute or 2 depending on quantity…. I have a dishwasher and lots of storage tubs. Then your chilli / spag Bol etc is just a microwave away.

I also batch up salads. This takes some prep. But it’s just the once. Usually cook eggs and whole chicken and pick off, chorizo, olives, cheese, artichokes, egg, tomato, beetroot etc. All ingredients apart from lettuce placed in small tubs in portions. Pop the lettuce on the plate, add the tub contents. Can be done a couple of days in advance - avocado doesn’t work well of course so I tend to just have that for day 1 when eating fresh. You can also make pasta / rice salads in vast quantities and those don’t even need reheating.

I have a slow cooker but I think a pressure cooker would work. Tomorrow I will cook a whole chicken on a bed of veg but no onion. Will have slices of chicken with roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and veggies with gravy made with some of the juices. I will strip the chicken putting the meat to one side and then chopping all the scrap meat for our puppy along with a little of the juices (hence no onion). I will make stock with the bones for soup or risotto. Next day use the meat for sandwiches, salad, chicken pie, risotto or coronation chicken for jacket potatoes.

Make one or two meatloaves, hot dinner one night and then lovely cold with bread, salad or chips.

Big pot of ragu serve with pasta one night, add some chilli and kidney beans for the following day.

Also think about how you are storing things, soups and sauces can be put in zip lock bags and laid flat to take up less space when frozen.

Pot noodle can be very liberating.

'have a slow cooker but I think a pressure cooker would work.'
Multi cooker does both; i swear by mine.