To make frozen pizza every night?

[Cinocino]

Yes, I think that’s an obvious yet. But between cooking healthy meals and snacks for toddler and freshly weaning baby I’m spent at the end of the day and running out of ideas and energy for adult dinners.
Dinners have to be separate during the week as kids eat about 4:30/5pm but DH doesn’t get in from work until 7:30.

What are your go to 1 step more than shoving a pizza in but incredibly low effort dinners?
Im struggling to have the time to plan out meals, do them on the food shop and then cook the meals in the evening at the minute due to sheer exhaustion of waking up a lot at night and the mental exhaustion of a whingey baby and toddler.

I’ll probably start this and not be able to read it for ages due to said high maintenance baby 🤦‍♀️

With a baby and toddler at home all day every day, I’d honestly make this your DH’s problem to sort.

Let him think about what you’re having for dinner every evening. He can meal plan, go to the shops on the weekend to get everything in.

He gets home at 7:30, he can have dinner on the table by 8ish and your end of the bargain can be making sure the kids are settled and asleep so you can enjoy a nice meal together before crashing.

Either give the kids leftovers from the previous night, batch cook and separate into small portions or cook earlier in the day and reheat up.

I have never in my life cooked separate meals. Adjusted some elements, yes, but never totally different meals.

I have even been known to give the kids healthy picky bits as a snack earlier in the evening then feed them properly later with us at 7. Does depend on bedtimes I guess.

Just coming here to say that, ITS OK to have ready meals and shit frozen stuff temporarily until you have enough sanity and energy to think about healthier meals.
To make you feel better, when my DH works away I often give the kids quick easy things that are not the best but not terrible, then add cucumber to make me feel better about the veg side:
Beans / egg / cheese on toast
Frozen pizza / nuggets / fish fingers
Sandwiches
Sometimes literally it's just a mixture of snacks!

If I have more energy then healthier easy stuff I do for the kids is:
Picky tea - chopped veg like carrot / cucumber / sweet peppers, bread sticks, cheese cubes, chopped fruit, dips, crisps, chopped ham if I've got any, etc
Veggie rice - cook some rice, add in some frozen veg, then mix it up with cream cheese. Easiest veggie rice ever!
Pasta with some kind of veggie sauce - shop bought or sometimes I batch some easy butternut squash sauce (frozen butternut squash, garlic and cream in food processor) or literally whiz a load of whatever veg you have in the food processor to make a sauce the kids will eat.
Put cheese on everything so they eat it.

For myself I often have the low cal Tesco frozen ready meals available in the freezer if I'm desperate, but if I do make a proper tea for us I usually always make double then portion it up for easy meals another day.

Have you seen the batch lady? If you get chance on a weekend you could do a load of grab bags for quick easy teas that you just heat up in the oven.
Does take some organisation though.

Again I will say, it's ok to save your sanity with pizza for a while!

This is what we did when kids were little. Reheat and eat the same thing as the kids had.

You can make a quick fried rice with pre cooked rice pouches. Omelettes are quick. Quiche from supermarket can just put in oven and make salad.

Buy pre made pizza dough. Not the pizza bases but dough - pizza express do an okay one. Buy a jar of arribiata or something and some mozzarella plus basil if possible. And then have everyone pick own toppings

I usually put out sweetcorn (from jar), jalapeños, pineapple chunks, ham, red onion, olives (all from jars and tins).

I’ve realised that I’ve made an assumption that you are at home all day every day with the kids.

But even if you work and the children are in childcare, I’d still do the same. One adult focuses on the children in the evening, the other focuses on adult dinner. You can’t do it all.

I remember really hating this phase on my second - seems like you spend your time walking back and forth between the worktop and the table, making food only to quickly find yourself cleaning it off the floor. And they're not even dropping milk feeds yet so you need to fit those in too. And my 2yo was in nursery!

This is a short lived phase, it will get easier soon, so I wouldn't be afraid to lean on the frozen pizzas, shop bought soups etc for another wee while. I'd aim to move to cooking one meal asap, but that time may not be yet.

A few ideas

• Could DH take over the planning for your dinners? Sounds like you have a hell of a lot on your plate, if he took over the mental load of that would it help?
• We tend to have the same 7 meals every week. Not particularly inspiring, but there's enough variety within the 7 that we're happy enough and it removes so much of the mental load. The shop is always the same, and we both know at 4pm what dinner will be, because it's Thursday so it's tuna pasta bake etc.

And peas and rocket are both nice with pesto. With fresh summer peas ( though frozen are fine) you can stir a few through the pesto pasta and pop a little nest of rocket and lemon juice: olive oil on the top which is super quick and light and summery but adds some veg ( and actually nice textural contrast!) My mum always serves peas tossed in pesto in the summer.

I have no idea of what sort of budget you have but have you looked into good-quality frozen meals?
For example this website lets you order from a range of healthy options and delivers to your door www.cookfood.net/menu/main-meals/meals-for-4

Quick meals I do for my toddler-
Cheese omelette and add some veggies
Jacket potato tuna and cheese or beans (microwave jacket for 5 mins and throw in oven for 15)
Beans on toast
Eggs on toast
Pancakes with Greek yogurt and berries
Broccoli orzo which is orzo pasta with broccoli boiled and mix in cream cheese and cheddar cheese
Pesto pasta
Breaded fish
I also buy the M&S little ready meals cod and parsley sauce for a day we really need a quick meal.
I would say half the week he eats with us and the other half he eats earlier.

I think lots of people are picturing older kids. 2y and baby can’t eat later, they go to bed.

I find it crazy that some people say they’ve never eaten later than their kids when their kids were babies.

Main thing: You are doing great.
Second thing: This shall pass.

I would put less effort into solving this right now and more into getting yourself rest. When you have more energy you’ll find you can think of things to cook and actually do it.

In the meantime, if you have the funds or have a kindly generous relative then ask for some COOK meal vouchers. Frozen meals that actually have real ingredients and aren’t full of crap.

In fairness, ours always had dinner with us at 6:30 at those ages, so it can work but 7:30 is too late anyway.

Take turns to do the batching.
Or if you do the planning, he does the cooking.
He does the planning, you do the cooking.
And no it never gets less depressing.
I hate it which is why I generally just do double meals when I do happen to be cooking, rather than do a specific batching session!

I also make the most of baking with the kids, and I'll do "an activity" baking with them but really it's batching some healthy flapjacks, banana pancakes, muffins (naughty or veggie) so I can freeze them for healthy snacks.

Also I saw an amazing tip on insta and I now do this for my kids and it works well - pre prepare healthy things for them to snack on while you're making tea. So literally chopped cucumber or pepper etc, stick it in front of them while they're waiting. Even if they don't eat as much of their tree, they'll be occupied, less starving for tea, and at least they're filling up on the good stuff!

My husband did all the meals when DD was little, even when I was on mat leave. Delegate it to him, he can come home with appropriate quick food.

Our go to when we are knackered is filled pasta, omelette or ready cooked chicken with prepared salads.

This really isn't possible for all families. We eat together half of the week and then sometimes my toddler eats earlier because on my work days I'm not back till past 7.
It's not affected his eating and he sits at the table lovely. And is also when going out for meals.

I’ve got a list going on my notes with a lot of the suggestions. I won’t have to think about the meal plan for weeks at this rate!

@LuckySantangelo35 the Green Roasting Tin cookbook by Rukmini Iyer has got us out of a real rut for easy veggie meals.

In fact the whole series is great for anyone short on time. They all involve pretty much just chopping some stuff and bunging it in the oven.

Gousto. We get ten minute ones because we know we do t have the energy in the week to cook and plan.

Also definitely this.

To be honest, DP and I quite enjoy it. So if you don't, it's probably not the solution for you! We both meal plan together (each think up some meals we can make, write them on the kitchen blackboard, add the ingredients to the shopping list, and whoever can be arsed puts them in the online shopping order). Then we each batch cook something at some point over the weekend. And we do the quicker meals on weeknights when we're short of time.

Because we all eat the same, we're having to cook from scratch now that the baby is weaning because of the salt content. But up to 6 months we'd been happily working our way through M&S's ready meal selection. The curries are quite good, and reasonably good value in the meal deal if you cook your own rice and get the vegetable sides. Toddler eats the milder curries. And as you're eating separately after the kids are in bed, you can have the meal-for-two deals without having to share your pie with a hungry toddler.

OP - do whatever you need to do to get through your very busy and stressful days. Whether it's pizza, a sandwich or beans on toast.

Things will get easier as they get older.

I hate it when people on here always go on about the mental load blah blah blah. But I am unsure why this is just your problem to solve? When mine were that age I made the food for the kids and the other half cooked for us when he got home from work. While he was doing that I’d be on high alert with the kids during the danger nap hour. Or he would come in and look after the kids while I cooked.

I agree. Toddler has an excellent palette, isn’t fussy, eats full meals when served etc it just works better at times to eat separately.
When I was working FT I started the habit that toddler got a snacky plate as they had a hot meal during the day, this way I got to engage with her in the evening rather than be busy cooking and then dinner would be started later for me and DH. At weekend or the occasional day DH has an offsite meeting or something and can get back earlier then we all eat together.
Having dinner earlier a few nights a week hadn’t made her fussy in any way.
I still sit at the table beside her and have a coffee and chat about her day. She’s not alone and not engaged with just because I don’t want olives, breadsticks, cold chicken and strawberries for my dinner at 4:30.

OK, if you want recipe ideas then here are 3 under 5-10 minute prep ones:

Cube up sweet potatoes, courgettes and beets. Slice up leaks, peppers and crush a couple of garlic cloves. Put it all in a tray with olive oil, salt, pepper, chiliflakes and in to the oven for 20 minutes or so. You can add chorizo if you want a meat version. Add crumbled feta cheese on top and let it cook for another 5 minutes. Eat as it is or with tzatziki and spinach leaves.

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/silvanas-mediterranean-basil-pasta

Put ready made tomato soup in a pan, add filled tortellini and let the pasta boil in the soup. Serve with parmesan or similar. You can also add fried diced bacon if you want meat or some toasted pine nuts if you want some crunch.