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.

Oh teach your 14 year old. I used to regularly cook my dad’s and my dinner about twice a week when I was 14. Mum was at work. I loved doing it too.
Never burned anything nor cut my fingers.
He used to really look forward to it. Which upset mum a bit.

have you tried just doing this?

No I really don't.

People moan and moan but don't do the obvious.

We batch cook most of the time because it's going to be effort anyway. Might as well make several.

I can make approx 12 dishes which are easy after work dishes that everyone loves. I put these into Deepseek and asked for a monthly meal plan. So much headache removed!

I tried ChatGPT but that failed spectacularly, adding in random dishes I didn't put on my list and missing some that were on my list.

Its the call and response "what do you fancy for tea?" "Dunno, owt" "ok im doing xy with a side of z" " No, dont feel like that" And yes I've meal planned, goustoed and whatever. Id happily live off cereals, eggs and toast.

There are various people on this thread who have explained very specifically why they can’t do what you do. Have you not read the thread, or did you not understand it?

I'm such a terrible teacher though, so impatient! What sort of meals did you cook, anything and everything? I do mean to keep teaching him a spaghetti Bolognese at the very least.

Did it hallucinate foodstuffs that don’t even exist?

Its the bane of my life....mum to two growing lads who like different things. Regular meals we all eat together are stir fries, curries, roast dinner, spaghetti Bolognese, meatball subs.
We had curry the other week.....two with jacket potatoes and one with chips!! 🤣🤣
But at least we all ate together

Ughhh, yep! The cherry atop the shit sandwich!

And rarely are they grateful. Do wonder why I bother 90% of the time!!! However if left to their own devices, they’d all be scurvy-riddled, roly-poly junk food addicts…….Soul destroying job!

My kids came up with a really sweet system, every family member wrote down their 5 fave meals that they knew for sure every one could/would eat (or at least consume enough of to survive because they're picky buggers). They go on individual pieces of paper into a tin, every time I do the big shop/online order, I pick out 5 of them and then order the ingredients and pop the meals on a pinboard. Anyone can then cook any meal that week, as the ingredients are in, we all like the food and then once cooked the paper goes back into the tin. Once we get bored of the 20 meals, we start again. I let them use recipe books to inspire them and just add the recipe book and page number to the slip, so I can look it up. Then I do one easy meal (jackets or beans on toast) and Sunday is a roast or special effort meal. Done and dusted. It's transformed my life!

Yes yes I hear you! May sound like a petty problem to some but it absolutely does my head in! Teenage boys and a husband who to be fair to them will eat everything I give them (in volume), but never seem to be able to tell me what they might fancy so I have to think of every meal. I like to make sure they get home cooked meals every night, I try to make sure it's full of veg if I can too, is ok to re-heat as my husband often works really late and the boys are in and out, and I make sure I don't repeat the same meals - I don't even like to repeat the carbs if I can manage it so eg we'll have pasta one night, then rice, maybe mash, a cous cous and then I'll do wedges. I probably make it a lot more complicated than it could be now I'm actually typing it and I bet none of them even notice and definitely wouldn't care!!!

I've just bought a magnetic menu planner for the fridge which seems to be helping a bit but I really need to get more organised with it I think.

I'm persevering with this despite the '"Can you cook dinner? Just knock up a Spag Bol' " I think Ill make Korean Gokujang noodles..." 3 hours, 57 trips to the shops later, dinner is served. I'm going to force them ( especially my 18 year old) to just learn 5 boring dishes off by heart.

i just keep it chill in the week - slow cooker on my 2 work from home days makes enough food for 2 days dinner - so thats 4 days covered

and theres usually something in the freezer for the 5th day (bolanaise / cottage pie / curry etc) as we batch cook something one day a week!

Very happy to have a pizza night or oven food night or pesto pasta as well when feeling lazy

weekends might do something a bit different if we can be bothered

But really i just say be boring tbh no need to overthink

Jeez all these families where kids learn that cooking and the mental load of planning/shopping is entirely a woman’s job.

Why don’t any of your husbands do it???

I did read quite a few posts before I posted but they were all just people moaning.

Can we please stop using AI for this kind of thing?

I have a list of about 20 dinners, nothing very fancy at all, so I check that now and then for dinners I’ve forgotten about.

I usually try to think 2-3 days ahead, to make sure I’ve got the wherewithal.

But I do agree, it’s the endless, endless thinking, not so much the actual cooking.

One of my favourite luxuries, once every few years, is when there are no other humans in my house for the night and I can just not bother with dinner.

Chopping and clearing up.

I love the actual cooking.

So sorry to hear about your cat. The meal planning sounds stressful so well done for all the planning you do. Understand you must get fed up of it all

Yes, it’s the bane of my life.

I actually enjoy the process of cooking, I just hate making decisions about it. I suggested a house meeting and writing of shopping list on Sundays but nobody wanted to do that (there’s three of us and we all cook) as they prefer to see how they feel on the day. Drives me mad.

Beat me to it- it's fab and I feel like a real adult, cooking exotic dishes for the family
NB I don't work and some of the dishes take a long time to prepare (there are some faster options but I think most take a bit of time)

This is a good idea, I’ll get myself a tin!