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?

They could be better; I don’t see much vegetables on it? They seem a bit boring TBH; not very creative.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time cooking but you do need a bit of time planning and shopping on the weekend. There are so many easy recipes on the internet these days and cooking books.

Why would you have potatoes and rice at the same time? Can you add more vegetables? Replace new potatoes for sweet potatoes sometimes?

It sounds great for me but personally for my ds, I prefer for them to eat meat or high protein beans/lentils daily. If I make them lasagne or bolognese, I’ll bulk the minced beef up with lentils and spinach. It works out much cheaper as I batch cook and freeze it into portions for them. For pasta sauces, I roast the veggies in the oven and blend them.

If I give them salad, they’re hungry shortly after and it’s more of a snack than a main meal.

Oh and red and white wine, so another 2, thats 43

protein comes from many sources. You are only basing it on the animal based ingredients OP mentioned.

I think the fish thing is disputed. Not enough for for the world if that were really the case.

@Emanresuunknown s list of foods is basically what we have in all the time.

We also always have frozen fruits like berries, mango, pineapple. Frozen veg, all sorts.

This is just the evening meal though.
OP could be having all sorts for breakfast and lunch….we don’t know

I have to say I didn't think it was like a particularly extensive list. Surely most people have basics like tinned tomatoes, baked beans just in the cupboard. Frozen peas? Things like potatoes, carrots, apples, bananas are things even in the 80's most people would just always have had in.

I purposely made it a really basic list - I actually buy loads of other stuff in my regular shop, swede, courgettes, sweet potatoes, beetroot, other fruits like melon, pears, oranges, lemons.

I had chilli last night with rice, chips and nachos! I'm not sure why, I just really wanted chips! 🙈

Pesto pasta is a bit basic. If it was a dinner for a child id expect some chicken or something & some veg on the side.

Rice & potatoes in the same meal is a bit bland.

It comes across as a lot of "quick/easy" type meals.

If your family are happy and eating it then that is the main thing!
I often do a roast on Sunday and then any leftover meat would be the base of a stir fry (with lots of veg - maybe a prepared bag for ease) on Monday.
The pesto pasta would be another way to perhaps use up leftover roast chicken with some broccoli (you could cook extra on Sunday so it's a quick assembly).
Bolognese or chilli I grate in a courgette and finely chop mushrooms. They're unnoticeable once they cook down and make the mince go further.
Pizza and salad was a favourite when DC were younger also piri piri chicken thighs, good quality sausages or burgers (no buns) with sweet potato jackets or wedges and salad.
When we holiday in France, self catering, salad and new potatoes accompany most meals. Vegetables do not seem so readily available unless they're grown locally.
Don't worry about potatoes and rice if that's what DC wants. We were surprised on holiday in Portugal that chips AND rice was a regular offering in restaurants!

Agree.
However I was amazed that my cousin ( mid 50s) with her four daughters never buys or eats veg and rarely fruit. Unless they are in a curry or pasta sauce.

Not surprisingly she has many health issues.

It’s got in my head after this thread - like a tune that won’t go.

But I just made lasagne this evening and it was my normal recipe because I bought the ingredients before reading this thread.

Count was onions, garlic, aubergine, courgette, mushrooms, black olives, a lot of tomatoes and some asparagus on the side. Strawberries and raspberries for dessert. So I guess that’s 10 in one meal. If you had a similar lunch you could probably get close. It seems much easier if you can count tiny amounts - so sultanas and dried apricots with breakfast muesli.

I'm pretty sure there was a Michael mosley TV show where they took a family, did stool testing of their gut microbiome, then did several weeks where they tried to eat 30 different plant foods each week, then redid the stool tests and basically showed their gut biomes were loads loads healthier and much more diverse in terms of healthy bacteria.

And its 30 a week by the way, not a day, so your lasagne is a 3rd of your weekly total.

Yes but no comparison for the change if they ate 10 a week, or 50 a week.

As I and others have said, of course its better if you can do this, but lets not make people have yet another thing to worry about and feel they're not up to par on.

And its easy to lose track of what you have had in any case, Ive just remembered more ingredients from last nights meal, the list is ever growing.

Oh you’re right.

I think it’s not too tricky then. It’s counting the things like garlic and black olives that makes it easier - things that wouldn’t normally be a portion.

In terms of worrying though, it’s actually much easier than five a day.

@DrPrunesqualerwe genuinely don’t have space to store all of those things at once. We do a weekly online shop and that’s it 🤷‍♀️

The thing is, nobody is saying that eating 30 plants a week is a bad thing.

Just that it’s not something that should be used to beat people over the head with, or to make them feel guilty about.

There are lots of reasons why people can’t eat a hugely varied diet - time, money, knowledge, storage, equipment, allergies, disabilities, illnesses - far too many posters on here are too quick to berate without trying to understand the bigger picture.

They sound nice but nowhere near filling enough for my DC! Plus up the fruit and veg.

What’s wrong with lots of quick and easy meals?

Well dont you know everyone has to be some sort of kitchen maestro.

No - we genuinely don’t have all those things in stock all the time. I have zero interest in cooking (and DH is the same) so our meals are quick, easy and what can be thrown together with as little cooking as possible.

Today’s tea was flatbread with goats cheese, sun dried tomatoes and olives. No cooking involved and ready in three minutes.

I just don’t care all that much about food and I think many people are the same. Add in autism and sensory issues on top and I just eat what I know I can tolerate.