To give up on dinners entirely?

[Goodgravythisisfantastic]

So bloody sick of thinking about food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, every day, every week, every month. Who cares?

Tonight we had beans on toast with sausages and fried egg. Son (nearly 3) ecstatically happy. I realised everyone is happier with the simpler meals and I'm happier for cooking them.

I'm ready to give up and cook only beans on toast, baked potatoes, tuna pasta, fish finger sandwiches, toasties with soup, and chicken burgers.

YABU- stop being lazy and cook a decent meal ffs
YANBU- embrace the lazy dinners. Everyone's happier. In fact here are some lazy dinner ideas of my own...

Thanks in advance! 😴🥱🥔🥪🍳🌭🫘

@cocavino I know how you feel and you have all my sympathy because I have 3 children and one was a bad eater (the other two were always happy eaters) and for about 3 or 4 years when he went through a phase of not wanting any food at dinner time. I did persist though. Still gave him the same foods as us. He would eat very little and its absolutely desperate. The kids always have all the fruit and yogurts available in case they are hungry and he ate plenty of oranges and bananas. But was terrible at meal times. He is now a teenager and eats everything so thats the good news...it will happen to your daughter at some stage :-)

Sorry I cannot answer everyone. I don't think that we Spanish are any better than anyone else, there are good and not as good habits in every country. I did try and adopt all the good ones here. Like having a good sleeping routine. It really has a great impact.
Someone pointed out that she noticed and increase in processed foods in supermarkets in Spain. I'm sure it's true but I left Spain in the early 2000s, possibly habits are now changing which is very very sad.

Thats it exactly. Not all children like sauces or fancy food.

My youngest loves a certain veg, won't touch any others detests all things mushy or sauces (mince, or any mince based dish / mash / banana / mango)

Even as a weaning baby refused all gooie mush. Nothing more depressing than spending ages, when your already short on time, preping baby mush for them to refuse to eat it.

Very true! Was pondering as I had strawberries with my breakfast but they would have probably only been half a portion. Was then thinking maybe it’s better to have a bit of a variety rather than make sure it’s 5 a day. I don’t know.

Last time I checked, I was definitely an adult, despite the fact that last night my dinner was a 15-minute air-fryer job of fish fingers, waffles and broccoli, which I presume doesn't pass muster in your book as 'decent food' despite it containing starch, protein, fat and an array of vitamins and minerals.

I spent the time sitting in the garden enjoying some sun and a light-ish spring evening, and I guess I saved a bit of money cos I definitely didn't buy a scented candle.

😂😂

Sounds lovely , not sure what the issue is

I'm talking about people who live solely on cereal,junk etc then moan about their mental health,health, skin etc
Then invest in " self care" because they feel awful.
Obviously that's not you

When Dc were small, I'd spend hours preparing healthy nutritious food they hated. They would gobble up beans on toast or spaghetti hoops with grated cheese. I learned to just add few steamed peas and carrots, with sliced pear or banana afterwards and a glass of milk. Perfectly healthy.

I worked with a dietitian (many years ago) and she used to say that you didn't need to worry about the nutrition in individual meals. She advocated that you looked at your weekly shopping trolley and, if you had a high proportion of fruit and vegetables (and, obviously, were eating them all) and a good balance of other foods, then you didn't need to worry if one of your meals was a ham sandwich or a cheese omelette as you would be eating plenty of F&V with your other meals

There was a television programme a couple of decades ago where a nutritionist (?Gillian MacKeith) used to get members of the public to lay their weekly food out on a large table and she would then harangue them for how beige it all was. She would then transform their diets using a lot of products that most of us had never heard of then . . . I seem to remember that I first learnt what quinoa was because of this programme!

Not sure I know or have heard of anyone who fits this description, but OK.

I’m an adult and I still love fish fingers. No one is ever going to persuade me I shouldn’t eat them.

Me either. Most people I know are just muddling along somewhere in the middle like me… trying to put healthy meals on the table every day but sometimes getting fed up of the relentless grind of it alongside working, cleaning etc. I don’t know anyone with an expensive scented candle habit 🤔

This is all up to you and how much you care about you and your family health. That diet of highly processed food you're mentioning is also called "the poor mans diet", it's quite fattening and taken daily is very bad for you. Aren't there any healthy take away options in your area? I do agree with you that grocery shopping and cooking takes more time (probably money) and is a total pain in the bu-tt when you just got back from work, I hear you... but this is your health that you're putting at risk.

I loathe cooking and when my tribe were all at home it was a huge PITA. I took all the shortcuts I could eg
All breakfasts were self-serve (toast and/or cereal)
School lunches or make your own packed lunch
Saturday night take-away
Sunday lunch at a pub / beach cafe
Monday - Friday dinners were 10 easy meals rotated over a fortnight, some batch cooked and frozen (spag bol, chili, casseroles, curries) others just tray bakes, shop bought pies/quiches, frozen fish in batter, veg & chips, omelettes, baked potatoes.

I made a huge bowl of chopped salad in vinaigrette a couple of times a week so it was always available, puddings were yoghurt or fruit.

Filled the cupboards with tins of beans, healthyish snacks, crackers, pickles, marmite, honey and peanut butter. Always had loads of eggs available.

Fridge always stocked with cheeses, salads and packets of ham.

This is all up to you and how much you care about you and your family health. That diet of highly processed food you're mentioning is also called "the poor mans diet", it's quite fattening and taken daily is very bad for you. Aren't there any healthy take away options in your area? I do agree with you that grocery shopping and cooking takes more time (probably money) and is a total pain in the bu-tt when you just got back from work, I hear you... but this is your health that you're putting at risk.

🙄

That's hilarious. Even a 'healthy' takeaway is likely to contain high levels of salt, sugar etc. Not to mention the cost and the likely packaging waste.

Beans on toast, as someone said above, is nutritious and filling. Eggs are full of vitamins and minerals as well as protein and good fats. Baked potatoes and tuna are excellent nutrition-wise. Fish fingers offer protein and good fats. A sandwich can be absolutely laden with good stuff (salad, veg, fruit, nut butters, Marmite, meat or fish or cheese or egg for protein, I could go on), likewise toasties. Soup can contain a multitude of veg/pulses. Chicken has protein, vitamins and minerals. Sausages are probably the least 'good' thing in the OP's list, but she's not talking about having them 'daily' ; that's why she mentions a list of things.

How dare you say she doesn't care about her family's health because she'd like to spend less time thinking about food, shopping for it and cooking it? Does it not occur to you that she might spend the time/energy/enthusiasm freed up on her family?

How offensive and condescending you are.

Before 5 a day, there are 2 spells of time, a time when junk wasn't readily available so people either didn't snack or they snacked on fruit.
Then junk became readily available and is cheaper than fruit so people turned to junk.(sweeties, biscuits, cakes)

Sorry for ruffling your feathers as I'm fully aware that's a very "English diet" (I'm a foreigner, don't do English diet, I buy groceries and cook them but then I don't have any children so I have the time which I'm sure OP has not), but that combo of carbs, processed food, cheap protein, "meats" (observed inverted commas) and plenty of salt is quite unhealthy.

@JacquesHarlow

it IS a chore though

who gets excited by it?!

MN has such a stick up its arse about food 🙄

This thread has made me more appreciative of my husband who used to be a chef & now works less than me so does all the cooking (and is also in charge of food shopping). It's pretty sweet. I know he does get very board of the daily drudgery of it all and we do have "lazier" meals quite regularly, these include (going in order of least to most lazy)

• Left over roast chicken served room temp OR fish fingers with rice plus some Asian style veggies (made better by various chilli oils, and easier by fact we have a rice cooker, best of the lockdown purchases)
• breakfast for tea (bacon/sausages/eggs/beans plus toast)
• egg n chips
• grilled cheese sarnies plus salad
• (if we have fresh bread) cold dinner with bread, cheese, cured meats, salad etc
• dippy eggs and toast / fried eggs and toast

I love cooking when I have time to dedicate to it. But the drudgery, the lack of appreciation, the daily grinding futility of it can wear down even the strongest of us. The having about 15 minutes between finishing work, trying to get everyone fed and the next activity coming along. It is soul destroying.

I don't know why you think it's so dominated by processed foods. And maybe observe that, when the OP says chicken burgers, she could well mean good-quality ones made with actual chicken meat and not mechanically recovered meat. Likewise sausages; there is such a thing as good butcher's sausages that are not bulked out with breadcrumbs and worse.
What's the 'cheap protein'? Tinned tuna? High in protein and in good oils. The beans/pulses you might get in a soup? Cheap, sure, and full of fibre, vitamins and minerals as well as protein.

It's such a weird, ignorant and frankly Anglophobic 'English food bad, other food good' attitude. Many other countries have supermarkets and massive hypermarkets offering cheap processed food as well as all the wonderful fresh stuff people fawn over. Not to mention petrol stations, corner shops, McDonalds and takeaways. Not everyone in other countries is pootling about lovingly preparing three-hour fresh feasts for their families every day.

Ruffle away, you're still patronising and offensive.

100% agree. I have 3 fussy eaters, very few of whom like the same things, and one has a restrictive eating disorder... neither kids eat fruit or veg willingly.

I just eat what the other 3 eat because its easier and i cba to make 3 meals, but i'd gladly have a more adventurous diet based on more veggie stir fry type stuff with noodles if i was just feeding me.

i am BORED of catering to them, majorly.

@LaPalmaLlama

why can’t you have this now though? And the kids the same?

kids don’t need a full cooked meal every day

Yes, we sometimes have chicken burgers. Made with fresh chicken breast, marinated in spices. Not sure why that’s any more ‘processed’ than anything they eat in ‘Europe’.