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! 😴🥱🥔🥪🍳🌭🫘

It's totally fine to eat simply, OP. Do what works for you. Obviously sausages every night aren't going to be healthy but you know that. You can have a perfectly healthy, balanced diet which is very simple if that's what you want.

I love food and cooking but this is exactly why we do a week in a half decent all inclusive every year - my DH and DC can graze mindlessly all day without it being my problem. That's my idea of a holiday. Though I'm usually glad of a decent meal when I get home 🙈

This is definitely me, DD is just coming up to A levels and has quite a limited palate fussy as fuck and I cannot wait til she goes off to uni. Imagine my dismay when she started talking about a year out!!!!

Disclaimer: I'll obviously support what she wants and would actually love her to stay a bit longer......

Great post @Netaporter
I am so so over cooking bloody tea

I think it’s fine but I’d try add a few more veggies if this is going to be a regular thing.

I love eating food and cooking it but having to make a meal from scratch late after working is soul destroying so on work days my teen and I sort ourselves out from leftovers/ batch cooking in the freezer or he goes wild with the airfryer. I do love a cheesy beans on toast night! We definitely won't be banning UPF in the house tho as it's needed for my sanity 🤣

Regular online food shopping during lockdown opened so many doors for me. I’d only done it for self catered holidays before.
Once a fortnight I repeat the basics basket.
Three clicks and it’s at my door.

Then I can shop nearby for the fun stuff. I make a flexible meal plan on paper every Monday which includes the family’s activities and appointments. The only thing I batch cook is soup or leftover rice for egg fried rice.
I can cook most things on autopilot and cut down time spent in the kitchen with pressure cooker, microwave and air fryer. Induction hob with a timer (and boil+stop function) means I can just walk away- game changer.

That’s family cooking. If I’m by myself it’s Cup-a-soup and toast or microwaved Marmite cous cous.

I mean I think your food listed above sounds perfectly healthy but your chilli probably only counts as 1 or maybe 2 of your portions of veg and unless you're having loads, your strawberries and raspberries on porridge are probably one portion between them. It's not a case of 10 different things, it's about portions.

If you wanted garlic to be one of your five a day you'd need to eat about three whole heads of it!

Having said all that, don't really worry about counting portions but just try and make sure every meal has at least some kind of fruit/veg. I would count omelettes, egg, chips and beans and jacket potatoes etc as perfectly normal and healthy meals. And ready made stuff eg chicken burgers (NOT homemade) now and then are fine too.

@171513mum

If you wanted garlic to be one of your five a day you'd need to eat about three whole heads of it!

Not a problem!

Ah yep. Another one of those people who feel food planning is above them

How on earth do you deduce this from the OP’s post @JacquesHarlow? What a bizarre response 🙄

As above two portions of fruit on porridge would be 7 strawberries and 2 handfuls of blueberries which sounds like there wouldn't be space in the bowl for your porridge lol.

Yup, massively overestimating the amount of fruit and veg you're getting. A portion of most things is quite big - a few pea shoots in your sandwich isn't going to be a portion for example.

Agree the constant dinner planning grinds you down. You asked for easy dinner ideas....
My kids like the filled tortellini you get in a vacuum pack. Spinach & ricotta the favorite. 5 mins in boiling water. Add pesto and cheese as they like. I sometimes do garlic bread with it.

I do chicken wraps as easy too. Sometimes I make my own gorgons and sometimes buy. Serve with wraps, whatever bottled sauces they want. Carrot sticks or mange tout are a great alternative to cooking veg. My family prefers them raw anyway.

Another easy dinner I do is make a batch of veg curry sauce. I blend mine but whatever your family likes. I make loads together and freeze some. For dinner I chop up pre-cooked chicken (like from deli/cooked meat section of supermarket), mix with the curry sauce and cook rice. One doesn't like curry so she has rice, chicken and raw veg.

Omelette always a hit here too.
Pasta bake not a favourite but I like it cause its easy.
Baked potatoes take ages but no effort. If your oven has a timer they are a handy one.

I didn’t need to “deduce it” from the OP, did I , @Sasqwatch . It was a prediction as much as anything. And I was right.

Go and read the rest of the thread - it’s full of OP and others in a giant echo chamber of people backslapping each other saying “I can’t be fecking arsed with all that”.

@PostItInABook I do the same. We have lemon chicken, Thai green curry, a few curries, soups, lentil bolognese and black bean chilli in the freezer. And bags of frozen prawns, fish etc. And a few sauces to add to chicken/ fish to make it more interesting

When I cook, I often make extra for the freezer

OP, a chest freezer will make life so much easier for you. You can freeze food in eg ice cream / soup / creme fraiche tubs, depending on portion size. I tend to do a mix so it's flexible

We started doing 'Breakfast for dinner' twice a week. It was brilliant and took the pressure off. I'm going back to it I think.

I love cooking and preparing meals, batch cooking etc. My hate is washing clothes, ironing, moaning at people to put clothes away etc. Never flipping ends. You do a load, it's all done, hurray relax. Then you blink and there's another 8 loads ready to go. And that's without 'I need my PE kit and eight clean pairs of knickers for tomorrow morning' at 9pm at night. We all have our lives and not loves!! 😀😀😀

No, I like cooking, trying new flavours and feeling that I've made a lovely meal. Mostly it's pretty simple stuff- pasta dishes, curries, stews, casserole, soups, salads, chicken in different flavour marinades, noodles etc. We also have the odd chicken and chips, beans and jackets, etc. Variety is good.

I would say meal plans variety of easier meals as long term it can mean your little one continues to try things. Personally I do like to have one picky meal a week (left overs) and a couple of easier meals such as pasta, baked potatoes etc. I also hate meal planning and find sometimes when the kids have had a hot school meal they don't want a hot dinner. Eggy toast or omelettes are a favour in my house

@JacquesHarlow it is a chore. When you're working full time, doing school runs, and admin etc, cooking is just another boring chore on the list! I'd love to know how not to make it a chore!

I grew up on simple but good food
The occasional Findus crispy pancake 😂
There was far less choice, salads did exist but only in the natural growing season.
We had an allotment and grew our own.
Most people with a garden grew a few lettuces and tomatoes or your neighbour would pop a lettuce and a cucumber on the doorstep.
We didn't think of a whole new meal everyday
It went like this

Sunday Roast chicken and veg, pudding
Cake baked at the same time, possibly biscuits.

Monday Chicken pot pie, veg
Tuesday Chicken and bacon rice
Wednesday gammon, egg and chips
Thursday gammon salad
Friday Fish and chips -always
Saturday Omelette,JP , homemade pizza -if there was leftovers from the gammon joint it was finished with the above or in sandwiches.
Lunches were " on toast" or sandwiches with bread from the baker, I lived on cheese and pickle
Breakfast- toast, eggs or porridge
We had oranges, apples, bananas and pears.
Berries in season
Veg was cabbage, cauliflower,beans soooo many beans in the summer

There is actually much less " planning" -you didn't cook one meal in isolation.
Very little UPF, everyone very active, mobiles didn't exist and TV started in the evening 😁
If you had turned your nose up at the above it was "unfortunate" as there was nothing else!

I enjoy food immensely, I love cooking and prepping dinners, I love cooking for other people, I even enjoy food shopping.

But I dread that day of the week when it’s time to sit and plan the week ahead’s meals. Making sure it’s not getting boring and sameish, making sure it suits my health condition but is tasty enough for everyone else, making sure it fits around after school activities and work shifts in terms of prep and cooking time. It’s the bane of my life.

That's nice, but you are listing a variety of fruits and vegetables - not 10 serves of fruits and vegetables.

Of course your three year old will be pleased with a diet of easy processed foods. They are designed to be tasty. Not ideal for every dinner, however.

After decades of catering for everyone, im over it. Boreddddddd!. So unless i want to cook elaborate meals, i dont. People dont appreciate the hard work thats gone into shopping, prepping, cleaning up, washing up etc.
I probably do couple from scratch meals (and freeze some)...ive started doing jacket potato, stuff on toast, soup etc.
Its liberating

But it is a chore. Planning, (shopping), cooking every day for other people (albeit your own kids) day in day out on top of work etc it most certainly is a chore, always having to think about meals. You might enjoy it but not everyone does.

Whenever my kids were having sleepovers at their friends my first thought was always great I don’t have to think about dinner. (I was just happy to have a sandwich or something really quick).

YNBU Somedays you can’t beat just making some egg and chips.