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.

Everyone in this house has different requirements, so each night it's choosing who to upset! At one point I used AI to come up with a 3 week meal plan that everyone would it and even it struggled. It was good though, I told it who was at what club when so it worked out which meals needed to be super quick, which night to use the slow cooker, and all that. Then it gave me a shopping list for each week, which I ordered according to them supermarket lay out!

Worse part of being a grown up 😭

Oh no spigatito, I'm so sorry about your cat ☹️

I feel your pain. My last child at home aged 16 is ASD & also ARFID - a year ago we agreed I would no longer cook for her because she didn’t know what she wanted and often refused what I had made which then spiralled into her feeling guilty and upset and then not eating anything.

Now I order 5 Frive meals a week for me to have after work and every week I ask her what she wants me to add to the Morrisons order and she cooks dinners for herself (she often batch cooks something that will make 2-3 dinners) and has lunch at school. Plenty of breakfasts and healthy snacks in plus extra frozen steamed veg to go with everything.

It’s such a relief!

Nobody eats the same thing here so they do their own now. I like spag bol but got tired of that too. They dont eat fish so thats a no. Years ago my mam did one dinner and you ate it. Find teens are hard food wise

I used to religiously plan meals and buy the ingredients so that we got to eat lots of different things. I tend to cook similar things now but having had that discipline when DDs were younger I have a fairly large stock of ideas in my head now and we have quite a good larder of ingredients in at any one time.

Really dull, but I was fed up up losing things at the back of cupboards or the fridge and have gradually bought lots of these which are great for both and organised a shelf at a time. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FK5XB2JB?ref=ppxyo2ovdtbfedasintitle&th=1

If you get stuck you can say what you have in and ask Chat GPT for ideas.

Agreed.

I had a 3 week menu plan with 6 week swap outs but that was back when the children were in primary and early secondary. Now I have a board in the kitchen where the adult DC mark when they are out for lunch (in the office) and out for dinner. It is slightly more complicated now but easier because there are far more dishes everyone will eat and DC cook meals too.

As you are coming up with dinner ideas today and tomorrow anyway you just write them down and keep them. That way you have a list of meals to look at and choose from. You can put them under the different protein headers like chicken, fish, red meat.

I did one better where I had a colour coded card so all red meats were red, minced beef, shin beef, topside for roast etc, chicken was yellow, fish was blue and veggie was green. I also had a stack of carb options so lots of pastas, rice, potatoes and then I could lay out a grid and see that we were getting a variety. So red meat like chilli and the carb would be rice or tortilla chips. I added sides too like sour cream, guacamole, salad. I will add I was a SAHM so had a lot of time to do this but actually once you have all this down it becomes easier to plan one week from. Then you do a second week.

As I said you are already making decisions so write them down in your phone, a notepad etc. My shopping list is written in a notepad and the week's menu is on the left hand page, that way I can look back for ideas or even when was the last time we ate X.

So sorry about your cat. 💐
I feel your pain, I have a vegetarian DS with an eating disorder and very limited meal options, a DS who likes plain food and won't eat anything processed. DD and DH will eat pretty much anything and I'm vegetarian too. It is a nightmare.

As an aside, my dad has mid stage dementia and will eat all sorts that he wouldn't have before. He goes for some crazy combos too, vinegar on cake, maple syrup on bolognese...

Absolutely hate it!!!! I hate cooking, I love food but hate being the one to do it, plan it, shop for it and clean it.

Neither me nor DH were raised to be fussy at all.
But I get that these days often people have sons, daughters, DH’s who all have their different ideas about what to eat.

@MyBusyUser You should try ChatGPT. I tell it how many people I’m cooking for, how many portions I want, and any dietary requirements or preferences. It then suggests four recipes for the week and even generates a shopping list for all the ingredients, which makes doing the weekly shop much easier.

This is actually something that AI tools like ChatGPT are pretty good at. Just feed into it everyone’s likes, dislikes, allergies, macro requirements, etc. and tell it what meals you’d like it to plan and it’ll also produce an ingredients list for you to shop from. Makes life a lot easier.

I've been getting Simply Cook and like everything I've tried.

Well in my house if they turned up their nose at what I was making they'd be welcome to make their own or go hungry.
When I'm at someone else's house I sometimes get fed something that wouldn't be one of my first choices, left to my own devices. But (allergies/ethical choices etc aside) I firmly believe you should just eat what you're given and be grateful. And when it's your turn to cook or you're on your own, THEN you make your favourites.

Well meal planning at the start of the week takes away the daily decision making. But doesn't remove the actual drudge of cooking the damn stuff every night.

I didn't allow fussiness - my children (some sensory issues but no arfid etc) were only allowed one meal each that they could hate and which didn't get cooked. i had too many children and not enough time to work out meals that all of them liked.

Completely agree. Am so envious of the rest of the family who just come into the dining room when they hear me shout 'Dinner', and sit down with a meal put in front of them. This is why I refuse to do self-catering holidays. The highlight is eating in a restaurant every single night.

OMG that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone say that! My dad also does weird things to his food now - half a bottle of vinegar on cottage pie levels of weird. He eats it quite happily though!

I used to so decided bollocks to it and basically have 12 meals that we rotate through on a fortnightly basis (I assume one night a week we will be out) & then repeat for a few months.

I am sure that is clear to everyone.

Yep

We meal plan every week we have 2 plus points: not having to decide daily what to have; help creating a shopping list of what we actually need and therefore less waste. We sometimes factor in takeaway nights and also quick meals when we're both working in the office.

The “eat what you’re given or nothing” approach would be blissful if it worked. If I did that in our current season of life, my dad would be dead and DS would be seriously ill. It really annoys me when people assume it’s just pandering.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm saying what my approach is, that's all.

Oh my goodness, yes OP totally with you! It's definitely the mental side of it more than the actual cooking. I can sense the question coming and dread it if I haven't planned something. Working out something that everyone will eat, that's healthy, tasty and provides al the nutrients everyone with their various activities need, something that will eb fine to reheat if we are eating at different times.

Even if I plan it all out at the weekend and buy all the ingredients ready to cook, inevitably someone throws a curve ball in and food gets wasted, un eaten or un made: husbands shifts changes, a child has a sleepover or eats at an activity. I don't understand how strict meal planners do it and don't have any waste? Does everything go in the freezer? De-frosting things properly and timely is a pain in the arse too.

What makes it worse right now is I am trying to lose wait so I am actually batch cooking smaller meals for myself, mainly with rice (2 out of 3 of my family don't really like rice) so the evening meal is mostly just for them, I'm not even eating it!

1 night maybe 2 a week I just don't bother, see if the husband bothers to think about it, 99% of the time never does, so the kids end up with a pot noodle, omelette or a cheese toasty they rustled up themselves and then I feel massively guilty that it is unhealthy (maybe not the omelette)! Then I think I should really teach them how to cook, but then there is the stress of doing that, and how much can a 12 and 14 year old do for themselves without chopping a finger off or burning the house down. Ugh.