Anyone else worn down by deciding what to make for dinner daily

[MyBusyUser]

I honestly think one of the most draining parts of ordinary life is having to come up with dinner every single day forever. Not even the cooking necessarily — the deciding. What everyone will eat, what we’ve already had this week, what’s actually in the fridge, whether I can be bothered, whether there’s time. Please tell me I’m not the only person weirdly worn down by the constant “what’s for dinner?” problem.

That’s why we do Gousto

wish the most draining part of my life was deciding what’s for tea

It is a bit relentless yes

I keep meaning to meal plan so I don’t have to do this daily. I think Chat gpt and various apps can create you a meal plan and matching shopping list if you ask? And obviously you can then ask it to tweak bits you don’t like the sound of. Have never quite got round to it though!

I meal plan 6 weeks at a time to avoid this, then when I do my weekly shop I can just look at the plan and buy what we need (with the right expiry dates).
Otherwise we end up eating the same thing on rotation, or I go to the shop and pick up what looks nice but then it all goes out of date in the first half of the week.

I absolutely hear you OP. I seem to spend a decent chunk of my day and week and life thinking about food and who is eat what and what time and I find it so monotonous and tedious and dull.

Yes but it is a double edged sword in that I enjoy cooking and picking out meals I want to try.
An all inclusive holiday is my dream as a way to have a week off from it!

I'm in awe at this level of organisation! How do you do it, is there a spreadsheet?

Oh god yes I feel your pain. And sometimes DC are here, sometimes DP, but the majority of the time I’m on my own, and honestly meal planning for one is an uninspiring task which isn’t helped by the fact I currently have 0 appetite for various reasons.

I agree I used to like cooking until I had to do it every day and for 3 others! It takes up so much time, thinking what to make, what to buy , when to cook it.
My children have left home now, I make the minimum effort these days thanks to Charlie Bingham.

I am fed up to the back teeth with fucking cooking and planning and storing food. I have my dad with Alzheimer’s living with me - he will eat anything as long as it’s British, overcooked and drenched in brown gravy. I have a very underweight son with MH problems who will only eat the kind of food you might see on TikTok and won’t touch anything my dad eats. DH and I are trying to get fit and look after our health - because our lives are too bloody stressful and we need to be at our best - so we eat a lot of soup, fruit and veg dishes, lean proteins. I spend half my life batch cooking and freezing things in portions so we can all have different things. Yesterday I made 16 cottage pies, 6 pepperoni pizzas, 8 portions of beef hotpot and 36 sausage rolls. Today I have made a vat of lentil and tomato soup and 6 portions of katsu chicken. I’m so fed up of it all.

Sorry for the rant. My cat was killed this morning and I’m in a foul mood.

I completely agree. My life would be so much better if I had a chef or at least a meal decider! :)

I also do this bit it's a 3 week rotation. It was mostly led by wanting to do the food shop more intentionally and shop to a budget instead of frequently missing money away. But by doing that, it's lifted a bit of the mental load. Thinking of what to cook daily, or even every few days, was draining.

Yes I hear you OP - I also find it so tedious! It’s part of the mental load and the impact shouldn’t be underestimated. I always notice how much more brain space I have when I stay at parents for example and they do all the shopping and cooking.

Just the 2 of us...meal plan every 5 days. Luckily we both like cooking and nice food. Hated it with kids

I feel the pain and its only DH and myself! I enjoy cooking and have a freezer full of various meats/seafoods/veg but need to remember to get something out to defrost. I have a fair few quicker meals which I make though.

You are absolutely not alone!

Gousto or hello fresh 4 days a week. Only one child is fussy and won’t eat it so she makes her own food (14yo). 1 day eat out or take away. Then other 2 days something easy out of freezer and/or pop to co op or M&S and get steak or stir fry or something!

I get ‘what’s for dinner?’
then when I suggest something it’s ’don’t fancy that’. So I ask for suggestions….tumbleweed…

I think I try to hard to make different meals all the time but I think life would simpler if you just had the same meals on a Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday etc like they use to do years ago. We are overwhelmed now with choices of food so it has complicated our lives

A friend of mine wrote out a list of meals that everyone in her house likes/will eat. She cut up the list and puts all the bits of paper in a jar and at the start of the week she pulls out 7 meals.

Sometimes I think it is because these days you have to ask people what they want to eat.
My mother never did that and you got what she cooked.
I find doing a list once a week, agreeing menus with some flexibility works well.

It's so bloody boring !