Sick of being the only person cooking nice, good quality food :-(

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4 of us in the house - DH, me and two adult DSs (one living at home, other going back to uni soon).

The food situation is really beginning to get me down. I do all the food shopping/ ordering/ fridge management etc (despite contact reminders about 'what do people want?' etc) and in theory the three of us (not student DS, who isn't always here) alternate cooking meals on a rota.
I tend to make an effort and cook really nice, wholesome family meals, often making extra so there are leftovers for the next day, or roasting etc chicken for sandwiches etc or making soup. It's all appreciated and eaten, as are the leftovers - very quickly. But it feels like nobody else bothers and when they cook it's a quick pasta and sauce meal, or whatever is the least effort. Or DH heats up something from the freezer which was meant to be for an emergency 😡.

I'm just so fed up. I want us to eat healthily and have tasty meals, but nobody else seems to care. But they're more than happy to hoover up everything I make, leaving none for me the next day!
It would be mad for us to all cook separately, and nor do I want to 'sink' to their level of cooking.
I don't think it's because they're incapable - just lazy. And we all have the same amount of time.

This drives me mad too in our house. DH moans about throwing away vegetables but I am the only one who prepares them! DH and DC ignore fresh veg but may use frozen alongside a frozen dinner.

On the other hand I never mow the lawn so it's swings and roundabouts I suppose. DH does occasionally do a full roast, which is probably the most nutritious thing in his repetoire.

DH also does wang on about wanting to eat healthily. Well so do I and there's nothing stopping you (DH) from making healthy meals for me and the DC, in fact, please do!

Don't buy the mixed range of staples that gives the others an easy option to just do pasta and sauce.

It's quite simple. "Let me know by Saturday what you're cooking next week please, and what ingredients you need and I'll buy them. If you don't let me know by then, please can you get them yourself before your day to cook". Then when their turn comes, there's simply nothing else available for them to make, they will have to make what they suggested.

Same here but there are advantages:

I never ask for input so always get to cook what I like (I do take known preferences into account)

I never do any washing up, breakfasts, lunches or cat feeding/litter even though they are my cats

Every now and then I go on strike and we have ready meals.

If they don't care, they don't care. They're grown ups and you can't make them and can't control their cooking/eating habits. Cook healthily if you like and let them do what they like. As long as they're not making you do all the work and expecting to waited on, the rest is on you.

I sympathize, DH and I share cooking and we very often annoys me by buying more expensive and less healthy pre-prepared options OR cooking overly complex meals that require specialist ingredients, use every single pan it in the kitchen and arrive late when we're all already starving and hangry. I often prefer the meals I cook and like you I don't think it's that hard to cook simple meals largely from scratch with some forethought and planning.

However I also think when you share something like cooking/meal planning you really do have to accept that other people's preferences and priorities are different to yours, I really don't see the big issue with pasta and a pre-prepared sauce or shop bought fishcakes for dinner, sounds perfectly tasty and good quality to me, especially if there's a salad or vegetables on the side... Not what you or I would choose perhaps but hardly going to cause nutritional deficiencies especially if you know in advance that's the sort of thing you're likely to have in the evening so you can moderate the rest of your day accordingly. Also what's the big deal about DH taking 'emergency' leftovers from the freezer, what kind of emergency are you waiting for? Our freezers permanently full of leftovers so I'm delighted if someone actively using them, I have the opposite problem in that DH often cooks a new batch of something we already have plenty of in the freezer. At least if he does this you do get a home cooked meal albeit one not cooked by him. But if you view it as him cheating on his jobs and you were planning on using that food on a specific occasion then tell him so, perhaps have a labelling system using coloured dots or sharpies what food is fair game and what's reserved for you only?

I do think you're going to have to accept the rest of the family are never going to put the same effort into dinner as you do, if you want fresh from scratch every day I think the only way to achieve this is you cook every day (and either the rest of the family do more other housework to compensate or you go to an 'everyone buys their own food and cooks for themselves' system). You could try having a conversation about sensible minimum standards e.g. every meal has to have protein and some vegetables in it, and if you do all the shopping you can refuse to buy the worst types of processed foods (e.g. if there's an over reliance on pasta sauce buy less or buy reduced sugar options), but I guess if there's too big a gulf between your minimums and theirs it will never match up, tbh that isn't the hill I'd choose to die on with my family, to me sharing the load and eating together is worth not always having exactly my preferred food but each to their own.

We do gousto for this exact reason

I think either you take on the cooking for more of the week and they do more of the other chores, or you take yourself out of the equation and get some sort of box.

Do they know how to cook? The pasta and reheat frozen meals makes me wonder if there's a lack of knowledge and therefore lack of motivation issue at play. You seem very comfortable in the kitchen based on the dishes and meals you described making. Cooking can be really overwhelming for someone who doesn't have the basics and wonders what to make, freak out at the prospect of failure, and retreats to something easy. If that's not the issue and it really is a "can't be bothered" attitude, then perhaps they can at least help you prep ingredients and clean up.

How would it work to be more prescriptive?

Do a meal plan and shop and then tell them: DH Monday, Sausage and mash. DS Tuesday, Spag Bol, etc

That would totally not work with mine, they would not bother submitting their ingredients then pick up ready meals or pasta and sauce on their way home.

But as someone else said, the advantage of me doing the bulk of the shopping and cooking is that I virtually never have to clear the kitchen up as they do it all.

"fridge management"

I second Hello Fresh or Gousto (which is cheaper)
It's dearer than crap food but cost effective when measured against decent home cooked meals.
Add an extra scoop of rice or pasta, or some extra veg to deal with those with hollow legs.
It will teach the young adults how to cook and their future partners will thank you!

Sit down and meal plan with everyone and assign meals to each person. Start by everyone just listing meals they like to eat, then order those meals in terms of fresh ingredients close to the shopping day. At the end of the week we had cupboard/freezer food meals ie tuna pasta bake, anything with a salad was just after shopping day.

You don't have to take on everything yourself, they let you because you step up and do it. I have sixth former children walk through a supermarket on their way home and they often have to pick up fresh veg or a carton of cream.

A friend really resents her husband's lack of cooking skills. She has two kids still at home and one in the army so home during leave. She always likes to have a good home cooked meal, though the kids are not always around, she's still cooking for the family most nights. She works full time and they've been married 25 years.
I think she either accepts it now - she wants the meals that way after all. But she still complains about it. Same for you - accept your meals are going to be one kind and theirs are simpler.

Meal plan for two weeks with recipes!
^
Get them to sign for which days and which recipes they are using.

You do the ones they don't pick, as you are more versatile.

If they don't like it, they come up with something else.

Don't buy the shortcut foods you don't want them to cook.^

I don't know about this. I say this as an avid meal planner myself but I'm pretty sure my DH and adult DC would find this pretty controlling/annoying. They like to decide what they fancy for dinner on the day and are happy to go to shops on way home from work for extra ingredients if needed and from their 'own' money not mine. Getting to choose what they eat according to passing fancy is what they see as the 'perk' of cooking, and they wouldn't enjoy being forced to stick to pre-determined recipes according to my preferences, at all. When we tried to stick to a meal planning system it ended up with a lot of waste as I'd have bought the ingredients for lasagne or whatever only for them to decide they actually wanted stir fry, leaving me stressed and frantically adjusting the rest of the week accordingly so nothing got thrown away. Is it really worth the stress, given its not as though they're trying to serve pot noodles or KFC every night, would it not be easier just to accept eating pasta and sauce a few nights a week and focus on improving the meals they do cook (e.g. by requesting a side salad is provided)?

yes totally agree, I'm the same. i do meal plan but only for 4 nights at a time max.

To be honest I took it as read that the plan would be things they like and can cook!
By doing a bigger collection of meals, you give them a selection to choose from.

But I'm married to someone who has had a cheese sandwich for lunch every day for 30 odd years, so perhaps have different expectations!

No I agree that's what the PP was suggesting, but what I'm saying is that some people just really don't get on with the whole concept of meal planning even if it is meals they like and know how to cook. E.g. when I tried to make my DH do meal planning I'd say for instance right DH can you make lasagne on Monday and cottage pie on Wednesday (lasagne and cottage pie being meals he likes and cooks regularly), or would you rather do something else and he'd look blank and say 'whatever you think'. Come Monday he 'wouldn't feel like' lasagne and would go to Tesco express for fishcakes or curry or something instead, leaving me annoyed and with a load of mince/cheese/salad needing to be used. Don't get me wrong, he's not an arsehole so if I said to him, oh DH I was really looking forward to that lasagne or I need you to do something with this mince or it'll go off, he would do it, but long term making him stick to deciding his dinners two weeks in advance would make him as miserable as forbidding me to make a meal plan would make me.

Basically what I'm saying is meal planning might be really useful for budgeting and healthy eating but it's not a moral imperative IMO, of course all adults in the household should contribute to cooking but so long as they stick to budget (or pay excess from their own spending money) and provide edible, reasonably healthy food how they choose to organise that should be up to them...

I think Gousto portions are quite generous, we get the four person box thingy. The greedy sod lads can top up with a slice or two of bread if they’re really still hungry afterwards.

But it really IS a thing, isn't it?

• digging out the thing in the salad drawer which has gone soft and mushy
• checking things like pate haven't been opened then left for weeks on end
• chucking out jars of things DH bought for a single meal then shoved at the back of the fridge (cranberry sauce, anyone?)
• keeping topped up with milk, eggs, cheese, ham etc