So tempted to just resort to ready meals!

[CrazyOldCatLady]

I'm so very, very sick of meal planning. It's been my job in our house for the last 10 and a bit years, without much input at all from DH. If I really push him for ideas for the week, he'll offer 'well, chips are nice' as a suggestion. If I pushed even more, he might manage to choose a dish one night and make it, but it would take him four times as long as it should, create four times as much washing up as it should, and there's no way he could coordinate a whole week's worth of dinners, never mind a bloody decade. So we'd end up having sandwiches or takeaways every bloody night.

I have loads of cookbooks, I used to love reading them or cooking blogs, I used to pin recipes on Pinterest.

Now I've just lost interest completely. I can't summon up the interest to try new recipes. We ended up having three takeaways last month because I just couldn't be bothered cooking.

How do I make it interesting again?

Send DH on a cooking course or to night classes?

He really does need to learn to do a few dishes. What would happen if you were ill & couldn't cook?

Could you get him a curry or chinese cook book? Most non cooks seem to like the whole alchemy of lots of ingredients, different things that happen with this style of cooking.

Bung a load of ready meals in the freezer, and give yourself some time off from the planning and cooking - maybe a bit of time off from it all will re-awaken your enthusiasm for cooking.

Maybe whilst you are having that time off, you could Sit down with your family, and get them to help compile a list of meals you all enjoy, that you can use when you are meal planning.

The other thing to do is to make a ten or eleven day meal plan & just roll it over for a while. I used to do this when working & small DC. You never get: "It's Monday = cottage pie" scenario but you don't have to think about meal planning!

god, i hear you. nothing duller than the constant cooking that motherhood involves. also recognise the strategy your husband uses, which helps ensure he never gets asked to take over. yeah, just fill the freezer with ready meals and go on strike. f*ck it.

I did a month of ready type meals as I lost my cooking love and was fed up of meal planning it was surprising at the the end of the month I regained my mojo and have been back to cooking my own things!

I do all the cooking and in the three years we are married we haven't had one single takeaway so I do get a bit fed up

Dh will cook but everything is dry and all saucepans used. He spends an hour washing the pans and getting himself organised,

I just do it

So now I batch cook. I make a huge pan of mince and freeze into two portions. Then defrost the night before and have with taco shells gnocchi etc. same with curry and stew
Then some nights we have pasta and pesto

It just gives me a break and then I don't mind cooking when I know I have a back up in the freezer

This happens me occasionally too, and we have take ways or eat out and I don't feel bad about it. A week of ready meals would have me returning to the kitchen, they taste really quite ordinary at best and after eating something ordinary I always feel a bit miserable.

i do really easy stuff too, like roast a chicken and serve it with a pile of rice and some cut-up cucumber and tomato. really boring but so easy you don't even have to think. (but then it is just me and two young children so i don't have some dude complaining about the boring food, thank god.)

I get this sometimes. I love cooking but sometimes my mind just goes blank and I end up cooking the same old stuff for a while. I then resort to a week of burgers, fishcakes, and when I really have lost all enthusiasm, sauce from a jar. After a week I'm soon digging out cookbooks for inspiration. Sometimes you just need a break to remind you why cooking is worth it!