Are my dinners rubbish?

[Sowhatbigdeal]

Been told they are

Here’s an example of an average week, more or less:

Monday (I work at 6, so do something simple)

Feta & red onion salad with new potatoes & rice

Tuesday

Pasta with jar pesto (working today)

Wednesday

Dh to do omlette/eggs on toast with salad (working today)

Thursday

Salmon, salad, new potatoes

Friday

Homemade chilli with rice, nachos & dips

Saturday

Takeaway

Sunday

Roast dinner/homemade lasagne

Are they?

Your weekday meals look a bit dull to me to be honest, the sort of thing I'd make for a quick lunch.

@Sowhatbigdeal Where do you live? It's relevant for several reasons.

The first is seasonal availability - markets brimming with fresh produce for instance.

The second is cultural norms and if you're from the UK , making 'UK type meals' rather than a diet of the country you're in now.

The third, as you say, is the climate and if it's hot then salads tend to be eaten more in Mediterranean countries.

The other issue is the availability of 'fast food' and how much the country eats.

Your weekly menu sounds very westernised but not as varied as somewhere like Spain France, etc or the Far East.

But we have to remember how wedded MN is to the main meal of the day which has to be in the evening, perfectly balanced and contain all the day's nutritional needs.

It's not allowed to eat 'meal' foods for lunch or breakfast, when only porridge or fruit and soup or salad respectively is allowed. Or possibly a sandwich but only if it's wholemeal bread and you don't have cake or crisps too because that would stray into 'too big' for lunch, no wonder there's an obesity crisis.

Well you're clearly not on MN or wedded to it or you'd not be posting sarcy posts like this!

Honestly it must be so exhausting to be so righteous all the time mustn’t it?

I actually make my son the PPPP meal once a week. It’s just pesto pasta with prawns and peas. Once pasta is almost cooked I add cooked frozen prawns and frozen peas to the boiling pasta and add the pesto once everything is drained. Maybe your little one would like this and it honestly doesn’t take much more effort. X

Why would it be a wind up, whats a wind up about it.

I set out the ingredients that were in my meal last night. You think all that combination is in a 'ready meal'? Really? Cumin and cherries for example or cucumber and blackcurrants?

I said very clearly it was a 3 course dinner. It included lots of components.

This is how I would normally eat, I would 'reach the target' most days, let alone a week. 30 different things, whether the stupid point system makes it to 30 or not.

My point is, I know about the 30 plants a week thing, I know how it works you dont have to foodsplain to me, but its fairly meaningless, ascribing a point here or half a point there to something as insignificant as a cuppa. Its a thing made up to sell books, information and give the middle classes something to mither over.

It could easily have been a ready meal. Lots of 'posh' ready meals have loads of spices etc. How would it be impossible to have cumin and cherries as part of a 3 course meal?
I was asking if you made it yourself as it sounded very interesting.

You sound annoyed but clearly you don't know how it works or you'd not have added up each herb and spice to come to 34. It comes to nothing like that if you value them as 1/4 each.

You might think it's nonsense but it's been researched at a very high scientific level, across the world, in conjunction with treatments for serious diseases, where a healthy gut has shown a better outcome. My BIL was advised to do that when he was undergoing treatment.

Looks too healthy for me my kids would never 🙈 good on u

Its not impossible to have cumin and cherries as a 3 course meal, you asked 'was it a ready meal'

Im not annoyed at all, Im incredulous really that this tiresome nonsense gets trotted out, it will be the same as the 10k steps, its an arbitrary thing

I said I had 34 different plants, I didnt 'point score' them, I know how it works, I do actually, god forgive me, have the book about it, thats how I know about it, for interest only, I dont subscribe to the necessity of it

Yes I made it all myself, yes its interesting, yes it was tasty. But somewhat meaningless in terms of what we are talking about and that was my point

And I forgot the rice. Another plant, so 35.

Herbs count, as do nuts, seeds etc. It's actually really doable. Surely you'd always have in like 4 or 5 lots of fruit (eg bananas, apples, satsumas, raisins, strawberries?) and maybe 4 or 5 veg like carrots, broccoli, onions, peas, sweetcorn. Then a few salad items cucumber, tomato, maybe lettuce, pepper. Potatoes are a plant. Add in a few easy wins - a few herbs, spices, some nuts, stuff like spinach, garlic, you can bung in loads of meals. Then think about stuff like beans, chickpeas, lentils. As a pp said, tea counts! That's easily like 25? Is it so hard to make an effort to add a few extra in after that?

Is that the same every week? Everything is dull if you have same thing each week

Honestly - no. My diet is nowhere near that varied and never has been.

And I forgot mint, and also that during the day I had oats, coffee, tea, green beans, so 40 now.

Just pasta and pesto? That's really not a proper meal.
And egg on toast with salad I wouldn't count either.
Are these the main meal of the day?

But it's not unrealistic for many people, I'm sorry. Those are pretty basic simple fruits and veg - generally all those are cheap, readily available. I didn't include any more exotic stuff like squash, or mango, pineapple, expensive berries like blueberries.
If you think that's wildly unrealistic then perhaps you are quite an unusually selective eater and that's your issue, it doesn't make it 'unrealistic for many'.

A typical UK family might eat meals like shepherds pie, roast dinner with veg, a tomato pasta dish with some Mediterranean veg and herbs in the sauce, maybe a stir fry with veg in. All of those are pretty normal family dinners which would easily fit the sort of ingredients I suggested.

I agree and I am not.

This must be why life admin takes so long. I mean it must be hours of work planning a meal that includes 30 plant types and no UPF's.

Growing up in the 70s, common teas were sardines on toast, with cheese on top under the grill, mushrooms on toast, omlette, or my mum would do this thing that Ive never found a recipe for a sort of baked egg in mushrooms and onion with cheese. Delicious. Alongside other abominations like liver and bacon and actually nice things like shepherds pie. My dad would often have bacon and beans as he usually got back from work quite late.

Not every evening meal has to be some sort of culinary wow. Nothing wrong with a jacket potato and toppings or similar.

I have a genuine question. No sarcasm or passive aggression - I really do want to know.

Who comes up with/where is the evidence for the 30 types a week where coffee and tea and chocolate count for half of a ‘type’? That just sounds genuinely bonkers…

Due to many serious allergies, we do always cook from scratch and do eat a mountain of fruit and veg, and lean protein (some of the few things I’m not allergic to…), so I’m not questioning this because it’s something I couldn’t imagine getting close to. It just sounds a bit…strange?

Indeed. One of my favourite meals, first eaten in Italy, is Ligurian Pasta - pasta with potatoes!

Eggs on toast /beans on toast are both going to be quite low calorie for the main meal of the day and I wouldn't consider either a proper meal for a 7-yr old. I'd only do something like that for a lighter lunch. And if she's having sch dinners those are tiny portions and poor quality so to then come home to just egg on toast isn't enough for a growing child.

I did pasta pesto tonight but as a pasta salad, it had chicken, peppers, sweetcorn, peas, chorizo, tomatoes and cucumber.

If it was cold outside it would be a pesto cream sauce with chicken and cheese kinda dinner with veg on the side

And Sardinian potato filled pasta. With mint and cheese. OMG