To find preparing 3 meals a day an absolute grind

[Bobbinwinding]

Just a vent.

I am just so absolutely sick of the relentlessness of having to plan, prepare and clear up three meals, day in, day out.

One DC is vegetarian, the other has a very restrictive diet. Literally the only foods they both eat are eggs, cheese, pasta, bread, yogurt and apples. That doesn’t leave many meals that can feed them both so I’m usually making something separate for each of them.

DH is a workaholic with some hang-ups about food/weight and will impulsively decide he doesn’t want dinner after I’ve already plated it up.

I’m perimenopausal and increasingly having to watch what I eat.

I used to adore cooking, browsing recipe books snd meal planning. But the daily grind of either trying to come up with something everyone will eat or making different meals for everyone is driving me to despair.

No one appreciates it. I feel constantly guilty about whether anyone has had 5 a day or too many UPFs or sugar or whatever were being told will kill us this week.

Can anyone relate? Any tips to make it more bearable?

I tried brainstorming a list of everything that both DC would eat. I only came up with 6 things that work for both without variations:

Four of them are “carb with cheese” (toasties, quesadillas, pizza, pasta with grated cheese)

The other two are beans on toast and egg on toast.

Even adding things with simple variations (like veggie sausage / meat sausage) it only adds 3-4 other options.

None if it is anything I’d consider an adequate meal for myself more than once a week.

I feel like I am always making Venn diagrams of the intersections of what people will eat and trying to construct ideas out of little bits of overlap.

I was thinking about this thread earlier. I used to judge my mum and my mother in law who both spend a fortune in Waitrose on those posh ready meals for 2.

after 13 years of cooking every single meal and the mind numbing boredom of meal planning I now get whey they do it!

Ask? I would be telling. You have some rights too you know and one of those is not to be a slave. This will otherwise go on forever.

I agree. It is a pain.

It's just relentless

Thank you. These threads make me so bloody depressed. I wonder if women will ever move out of the 1950’s housewife mindset. And they’re modelling the same crap to the next generation.

“Because they’d all starve.” No actually I think you’d find that they wouldn’t.

Women are exhausted because their fucking lazy OHs don’t take on 50% of the load. This DH is a husband and father first and because he’s a ‘workaholic’ seems to think that’s a get out of parenting. Also why is ANYONE in this household getting away with not clearing up? You don’t need a uterus to scrape plates and bung them in the dishwasher. Time to go on strike op!

Why are you doing 3 a day? Are they not at school or nursery? Breakfast cereal or toast. Are the DC old enough to start doing a meal each? Get a takeaway or ‘Cook’ one night

I sympathize and find the grind awful. I don’t do more than five evening meals a week. And two will be v simple. DC started cooking 13-14

They are all too dependent on you and it’s not helping anyone.

Regular breakfast things out on the table every morning for them to help themselves.

This doesn’t always have to be you and it would be good to get one of the DC to help (perhaps take it in turns) so they get into a habit of it and ready to take over.

School lunches instead of packed lunch.

If it really has to be packed lunches then make them up the night before, again do this around the table and have them involved.

Dinners on a rotation. Selection of dishes (eg vegetables, rice, protein) and wouldn’t put food on the plate for them at all, serving dishes and let them help themselves.

Your DH needs to be taking over some leadership of these things, many alternate days or swap between meals.

Saw you posted a few months ago so hope some things have already helped and you haven’t kept going as you were!

Breakfast in our house is toast or porridge with a choice of spreads, fruit,and a drink. Each person gets their own.

Lunch, there are cheese, pate, pork pie, smoked mackeral and home made soup in the fridge. . Bread, salads. Each gets their own.

If they can both eat omelettes, pasta, and bread (pizza), that gives you dozens of easily adaptable choices. I'd make and freeze portions of different pasta sauces. You could make a stack of pizza bases and encourage them to do their own toppings.

Fussy husband eats what you've cooked or does his own.

My partner doesn't cook ever. Basically he's a lazy twat and it gives me intense rage. So what I do is I just cook the things I really love. He can eat it or not. If I'm away for any reason I leave him to it, I don't leave him anything cooked and I don't do a supermarket shop. If he gets scurvy I don't care. Now I'm not suggesting anything quite so drastic OP, but why don't you ask each one if them to cook one night a week? That reduces your contribution by 3 nights straight off.

Personally I'd plate up for them, cuts down on washing up and cuts down waste and ensures better nutrition- most kids are never going to take vegetables.
I agree about breakfast and lunch- definitely go for school meals if you can, they will appreciate home cooked meals all the more. I'd recommend a student cook book- easy , cheap and most likely to be liked by kids. work up about 10 recipes and do them in rotation- it will be like autopilot after a while , and ill also help in compiling your shopping list. Have the kids laying the table putting out condiments and DH can handle the washing up/dishwasher (I also get mine to do the veg prep- they tend to be good at things involving knives.)

I’m in a very similar position OP so just want to send solidarity.
My only real advice is to tune out a lot of the noise around UPF and everything else that gets pushed at us in a guilt-inducing manner. I’ll explain to my kids why certain foods are better for us than others then let them make the choice. A lot of raw veg gets eaten as it’s all one of them will eat (veg wise) and I figure raw carrot and apple is actually really healthy so heck, it’s fine.
Not an option for everyone, but we do eat out and get takeaways a fair bit, as it keeps me sane.

This is good advice.

Stop thinking in terms of meals but rather in terms of “food.” Have bread, cheese, crudite, fruit on hand, plus some baked chicken breast or something for meat eaters. People can make a sandwich, salad or whatever. Microwave jacket potatoes or tinned baked beans.

Have a family dinner on weekends.

Try this scenario for a month & see if you like it.

No idea why this thread has re-emerged!

Eggs/pasta/pizza doesn’t really give me much variation as the fussy one will not eat omelettes of any kind, won’t eat any kind of wet sauce with pasta and will only have plain margarita pizza.

Basically the fussy one eats zero veg and no sauces. And the one who isn’t fussy is vegetarian.

There is almost no overlap in meals they will both eat. It’s all but impossible to make a single nutritious family meal that meets everyone’s needs without having to build in variations.

Fussy one has ADHD and struggles with mornings so I have to literally lead him to the table and stand over him if I want to have any chance of him eating anything at breakfast. Getting him to fix his own on weekdays would be a mission though weekends are a work in progress.

Packed lunches are an essential for the fussy one as again, he won’t eat otherwise. He’s the smallest in his year as it is, he needs to eat.

This is more like where we are heading really, I just try to tick the box on some basic food macros, particularly for the fussy one (carbs, protein fruit/veg) and try to relax about what they are.

Though I still angst about dragging the veggie one down to this “lowest common denominator dinner” level when he’s actually much more adventurous.

@Bobbinwinding can you meal prep frozen meals for you and the veggie so there is more variety through the week then just give the fussy one whatever basic meals they will eat? - or vice versa meal prep for the fussy one

Having children has made me fall completely out of love with food and cooking. I look forward to it returning one day when they are all more independent.

The only way I don't poke my own eyes out with spoons it to share the load. My husband does as much cooking as possible. My 10 year old makes his own breakfast lunch and snacks. My younger two are learning but still need supervising. My middle has additional needs and has rigid food preferences so that can be very very exhausting.

I would just make it all as easy as possible. Get everyone pitching in. It is boring and thankless.