to just give in and buy a whole bundle of Cook / Alternative Meals?

[TheLazyChef]

I'm so fed up with our shopping / eating habits.
We buy a lot of food, with the best intentions of cooking it and then just eat junk because we can't be bothered find the energy to keep to the plan. We end up with a lot of waste

Everyone has different meals, and we don't usually eat together any more, which makes me rather sad.

I've tried Gousto / HelloFresh, however it's just as much work. We tried supermarket ready meals and it's not really filling or healthy. Batch cooking didn't work either.

I just don't have it in me at the moment. We have SN DC, DH works a hard job, and enough is enough.

I want to have a nice meal at the end of the day with my family. I don't mind putting side dishes out myself.

Does anyone use Cook, or a similar set up, to help with this? Is it worth the cost?

Just do it. Try it for a month, see if it helps. You can always do a mixture of some quick omelette type meals, some cook, occasionally cook something if you have time

I really like cook, especially the veggie curries. Ideal for when you're short on time / energy/ motivation... Not cheap but cheaper than wasting loads of food.

Cook meals are generally very nice but you’d get quickly fed up with them if you eat them too often. At the end of the day they are still ready meals. Also some of them are very high in salt.

So YANBU but I’d recommend maybe twice a week. The vegetarian lasagne and crispy duck are both especially nice.

I love Cook! food, but it would be hideously expensive to have every day. I would certainly use it some of the time, and try and supplement with meals that are no or little faff to prepare. Something like baked potatoes with whatever topping, or fajitas where you buy the meat ready chopped and a stir fry mis for the veg.

Could you afford a part time cook house keeper type person

Thanks for all the quick replies.

I don't think we would get them every night, perhaps 4 week nights?

Are they just as unhealthy as supermarket meals then? I was under the impression that they were home cooked, without additional ingredients. I haven't checked though yet in case I get sucked in by their marketing thought I'd ask here first.

Is there an alternative?

@stepmad

Could you afford a part time cook house keeper type person

I really wish - this would be fantastic!

We're living off Cook atm and love it. With a new baby it's meant we have that much more time together as a family. Not cheap though and we'll have to go back to actual cooking one day.

Stepmad I would love that idea, would be my dream luxury I think as I love good food!

Op I have a similar problem and have just tried Hello Fresh too and agree it’s still an effort plus I don’t like the way they hid their labelling so it isn’t even clear the chicken is presumably battery farmed.

I buy Cook very occasionally due to cost .
I’m not inspiration at all really as stuck too!

Sadly I can't eat most of them due to being on a low FODMAP diet which means no frozen or chilled, then reheated starch. Otherwise I would, good for you

In a local shop they stock frozen home made ready meals made locally maybe there is something similar near you. They deliver too.

I sometimes do this, better than junk imo

If you can afford it, why not. No one is going to hold you to it if it doesn’t work out.

I think the point about the housekeeper is a relevant one though. If the shopping bill with Cook is £50 higher - would you be better off getting four hours of assistance at home?

Housekeeper is a very good idea. If someone came one afternoon for 4-5hrs they would be able to probably batch make a weeks worth of evening meals and give the kitchen a full clean down.

Can I ask why batch cooking didn't work for you? We do this once a fortnight and we each only actually "cook" once in the week, which we can cope with - the rest of the time we reheat stuff (mostly curries or chilli) from the freezer with a pouch of microwave rice. It was a total game changer for us and we were very similar before!

We used Cook very VERY heavily when we lived nearer one! It's perfect for the times when you don't have it in you to cook, we pretty much lived off of it when DC2 was born.

Is it great? Not really, there's plenty of fillers, they're very tasty so can be quite high in fat and calories, and they're expensive but sometimes time is the most valuable resource and preserving that has to be a priority.

Fill the freezer, grab a lot of veg and salad to go with it, and I'd say go for it.

I was going to ask why batch cooking didn’t work too - was it taking too much time? I wonder if you did slow cooker or one pot/roasting dish type recipes and then froze them as individual portions could that work?

My family have a variety of dietary requirements and it makes life really difficult. A child with a restricted diet/gluten free, a vegetarian DH. The only things we all eat together are roast dinners which are a faff midweek, especially now I work longer hours.

I get a Cook delivery every couple of weeks mostly with veggie stuff for DH so it’s one less thing I have to sort out. If you can afford it, I don’t see why not.

I’ve never had cook not one near us but they seem like nice ready meals. If you like the food and it will make life easier why not. Your main issues seem to be all eating different and not eating together. £18 for a serves 4 fish pie isn’t going to solve it unless you all like fish pie.

I'm guessing they're high in salt which is why they're nice

We buy a lot of food, with the best intentions of cooking it and then just eat junk because we can't be bothered find the energy to keep to the plan.

I don't really understand what's happening. Do you mean you buy ingredients for meals in your weekly shop, but then end up ordering takeaways/JustEat?

Planning a week is hard. More manageable to do 3 days at a time - if you have a delivery pass it’s easily doable. Can you do a list of meals you all eat? What didn’t work with batch cooking? If you like meals with pasta and rice I do a lot of pinch of nom and slimming foodie recipes. Often in slow cooker. They are all in one type meals - cajun dirty rice, turkey orzotto, fiesta beef, cajun pasta around 500 cal mark. Freeze and reheat fine.

I tried Cook stuff a couple of times. It was OK but I wasn't massively impressed tbh. It's expensive and I found a lot of the dishes were a bit too much sauce and not quite enough filling. A bit like how you mention with ready meals -- I found that 'unfilling meal' syndrome happened with Cook stuff too, unfortunately.

Several of them are frighteningly high in salt, too.

I'd say don't do it, once you have their salted caramel pavlova you'll never be able to go back!!!

Lots of replies, quite mixed.

Batch cooking doesn't work for us as I just don't have the energy or time to do it.
Would I really be able to afford someone to come in and help? I was under the impression it would be serious £££ to do so?

Not great if Cook has high salt content though.