If both adults work full time, do you cook your evening meal from scratch every day?

[lowlevelanxious]

DH usually makes a pasta with homemade sauce once a week, and I usually do a curry.
Then we try and switch it up for the remaining nights taking turns and make risotto, lasagne, chilli, fajitas, things like that. I am finding it incredibly time consuming to be honest, less the cooking and more the washing up and cleaning the kitchen after. It takes time that I don’t feel I have! Do you cook fresh every night?

We’ve only got a small freezer with 3 drawers so can’t do loads of batch cooking. Trying to avoid UPFs and mainly a veggie household anyway.

YABU - we cook even when we’ve both been out the house working a long day

YANBU - those days we have quicker meals from the freezer, jacket potatoes etc and don’t feel bad about it

What time do you get home and what time do you start cooking?

I’d never cook a lasagne or a shepherds pie the evening. I would do pasta and a sauce or something like that as it’s quick. I would put something in the oven and put on a pan of veg but not whole meals involving lots of chopping.

I cook from scratch but everything I make can be done in an hour max. Anything that takes longer than that I do at a weekend. We mainly have pasta, stir fry’s, curries, fajitas, jacket pots, chili and rice etc

Before we had kids, we cooked from scratch every night. After kids, I was home.

I think if I was dealing with this again, I’d batch cook things like curry and spaghetti sauce and get a few uses out of them. I do that now even though I have time because I hate cooking!

I mostly cook from scratch, though I do have freezer space, so have frozen bolognaise etc to hand that I've made from scratch.

My instant pot has helped enormously. 5 mins prep and I can leave it for 30 mins and we have bolognaise that tastes like it's simmered all day. Chuck a joint of gammon in and leave it for 45-60 mins and it's cooked. It does 6+ large baked potatoes in 15 mins with no babysitting from me.

We do eat UPF. A standard week for us might look like;

Roast dinner
Pasta with bolognaise and cheese (veggies in the bolognaise)
Chicken fajitas with frozen fries
Sausage, mash and veggies (fresh carrots/frozen peas) and gravy (from granules)
Pasta bake with left over roast meat/left over sausages/ bacon/ veggies and cheese on top
Pizza (from scratch if DD wants to make it when she comes in from school, or basic supermarket pizza with added toppings
Curry (jar plus meat and veg) and rice or beef stew with crusty bread or mash (frozen)

I don't generally think about dinner until I come in from work at 5.20pm ish. Dinner is generally on the table by 6pm ish.

My focus this year (because it might take a year!) is to get organised with my freezer. I have 3 drawers but its full of bags of veg which means the batch cooking hasnt got room, one drawer is full of pots of food though

So Im going to use up the batch cooks Ive got, use up the frozen veg into more batch cooks and then have a system where I only have the freezer full of home made ready meals so that I just bung it in the microwave and put with veg/salad

I think making sure the freezer has room and doing a rotation is the key.

No, of course not. That’s what M&S is for. We probably cook from scratch on 2 or 3 weeknights (tonight it was sausages, mash, veggies & onion gravy) and it’s M&S pizza, curry, lasagne etc etc for the other nights. DP always cooks from scratch at the weekend, unless we are going out.

I cook from scratch most nights, and make a big batch of bolognaise or a soup from pulses and freeze and freeze it.

Last night I cooked a Gousto 10 minute meal. Tonight I ate the leftovers and added left over potatoes and I made pesto pasta for dc as they don’t like the same meal two days running. I like it and would eat the same thing three days in a row!

I really dislike cooking in the evenings and I don’t like the mess. I cook earlier in the day when I can. Obviously when you work full time you can’t do that but I do what I can in advance even if it’s just cooked potatoes or rice.

I don’t batch cook as even when I have made a bolognaise sauce or a chilli and freeze it, I never get round to eating it and I don’t like the thought of eating stuff that has been hanging around in the freezer. I appreciate lots of people swear by it but I never think, mmm I fancy something from the freezer tonight that I cooked ages ago.

i cook everything from scratch but don’t have most exciting menu and eat same-ish meals fairly regularly!

monday is usually stir fry of some sorts
tueaday is slow cooker usually a curry or casserole
weds: previously batch cooked bologanise
thurs: soup and sandwiches or jacket potatoes

have more of a mixture at weekends. I also do my food shopping on line with a deliver pass for little and often and fresh food

Yes always
If we both know we ll both be late ( ie after 7/7:30pm ) then we precook the day before. Or do a simple stir fry ( but we re still chopping the veg )

I essentially make double then eat later in the week, so:
Monday - cook meal A
Tuesday - cook meal B
Wednesday - leftovers from meal A
Thursday - leftovers from meal B
Friday - cook meal C
Saturday - usually something easy/go out/pizza etc
Sunday - leftovers from meal C

For example, so you don't end up cooking every night, but don't have to eat the same meal two nights running, often vary what it's with as well to make it a bit different.

It's hard to cook from scratch every night, I often triple then as well, and put a double portion in the freezer for nights where it's all gone wrong 😂

But there's nothing wrong with jacket potato for dinner! Or beans on toast/egg on toast

Yes, but we rarely eat before 7, and I'm home not long after 5, so plenty of time

We both work full time, but both WFH.

We share the shopping but I do all the cooking.

During the work week, I make a proper dinner from scratch probably 3 nights out of 5. The other nights might be something like cheese or just snacks.

We don't do meal boxes or any delivery/takeaway (mainly because drivers can't find us / won't come to us).

We both work FT but I finish earlier, so I usually cook. We cook from scratch about 6 days a week for our evening meal. I do the shopping on one eve. I will cook a lasagne/pies/moussaka some nights which tajes a while, but try to get it to last more than one day if I do.

Slow cookers or pressure cookers really help with food that needs a long time to cook normally. That helps with stews etc.

It's stressful to be honest, but I hate ready meals and would rather cook. Plus it's the one thing I feel I get right for my kids! I can't give them an extravagant life, but do try to feed them a home cooked dinner if I can.

I cook from scratch when I wfh and tend to not bother with dinner when commuting once a week

I think I finally managed to crack this although I do have a decent freezer!

I have a three week rotating menu of four dinners a week (knowing that we are often out/will get a takeaway/will have leftovers or something easy from the freezer). All of them take me probably under 15 minutes of actual interaction plus maybe some cooking time. And minimal mess.

Once a week it is something and chips but I look at the ingredients of convenience foods and only buy things which don’t contain things that I wouldn’t use in my kitchen. I do also make extra of some things and freeze the odd extra portion but whats definitely helped is using a few cheats like frozen mash (aunt Bessie’s), frozen chopped onions, frozen spinach and also garlic paste. Plus veg to go on the side that requires minimal prep and can cook in some boiling water in the microwave in a couple of mins eg broccoli or green beans, or frozen peas or mixed veg. Frozen stir fry mix is also great! You may want to think about what to prioritise in your freezer.

I have absolutely every ingredient that I need for each week (even stuff that lasts for multiple meals) other than dried herbs and spices, oil etc saved to an Ocado list and then i just go through each week and add it all to my basket other than things I have some left of from last time eg pasta or frozen onions or whatever.

Been doing it since start of the year and going well so far! Also much less food waste. I’ve tweaked the weeks so that some ingredients are repeated to avoid the waste but it’s not too samey.

examples (nearly all have side veg / salad):
Quorn bolognese
lentil shepherds pie
vegetable Kyiv and mash
veggie burger and chips
baked feta with baby plum tomatoes and olives and pesto with new potatoes
tofu Katsu curry with rice
veg and tofu stir fry with rice noodles (frozen veg mix)
baked risotto
tacos

hope that helps!

@Springisintheair01 I get home between 6 and 6:30, start cooking between 6:30 and 7 and we eat sometime between 7:30 and 8:15 ish.

I do have a meal plan that I draw up every Friday before I shop on Sunday and buy ingredients just for those meals.

We cook large batches every three or four days, and just reheat it every night until it's gone.

I think the disadvantage if you work and cook from scratch is that you have to eat late

I dont mind it myself, Ive literally just finished the last mouthful of my dinner, which was left overs anyway as I spent some time batch cooking something else tonight which took time (it takes me ages to peel and chop things, I never know how people say prep takes them 10 mins for example)

Problem is that ideally I would like more than 12 hours in between dinner and breakfast tomorrow so Im trying to re jig the timings so that I eat around 7-8.

No, we don’t and I could because I work from home. We eat probably one takeaway a week and sometimes have a cheeseboard and bread or soup and bread.

If I’m on my own, I eat an omelette or scrambled eggs.

ive voted Yabu but I don’t think you are, it’s just that we do cook from scratch mostly!
Dh really, but he’s happy spending hours in the kitchen, says it’s how he relaxes (there’s a bit telly in there 😂). He’s usually home by 6, often before. And he’s pretty good at clearing to after himself most of the time.
We don’t have a slow cooker or air fryer, we make our own sauces and some kind of homemade bread to go with whatever dinner we’re having, basically just fresh ingredients. Don’t really have anything in our freezer, just checked and there’s some frozen veg, ice cream and some ice packs.
We do prioritise eating well, it’s a big thing for both of us but I grew up on freezer to oven food and microwave ready meals - my mum was a single mum and couldn’t be bothered with cooking when she got home - those meals were horrible even then so I’ve never gone down that route!

Yes but only because I work from home and finish at 4.30pm.
I'm lucky to be able to pull something out of the freezer to defrost during the day or prep the slow cooker.

Nope. We don't have children either 🤷‍♀️

Ish. When I was married to XH, the DC were younger and I worked PT but it was harder to keep on top of everything because they needed more attention. We (I) often cooked on Monday and Tuesday then ate Monday's leftovers on Wednesday and Tuesday's on Thursday. Cooked again on Friday and at the weekend.

Now I'm divorced. DC only here half the time, but I work FT, commute 3 days a week, and am more stretched in some ways, but DC older so can wait longer for food or oldest can do simple meals if necessary.

Between allergies, costs, and preferring the taste of fresh food, I can't really afford not to cook from scratch. Can be a pain because DC1 is a confirmed carnivore and DC2 is vegetarian.

Some of the quicker meals are stir fry (bag of veg, protein, own sauce because DC don't like the packet ones), shakshuka and bread, halloumi "burgers" and salad, ramen (base is dead easy then add noodles, veg, an egg).

I also have an instant pot. It's very handy for speeding things up once you've got the hang of it. E.g. you can make risotto quite easily. Also pulled pork. If you're WFH then you can put something on in your lunch break or a coffee break. I also have the quick roasting tin book and it's pretty good. Actually bought that to get DC1 to cook more.