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.

I only need to feed myself and I’m sick of it, I don’t know how those with families do it. A lot of the time I’ll just eat the same lunch x 4 and the same dinner x 4 during the week out of pure laziness. That’s not particularly healthy though!

I batch cook most things.

One child is veggie, one doesn't like onion or potatoes, one can't stand mushrooms, so I batch cook everything and then put a 'menu' on the fridge door so they can choose whatever they want.

Oh that sounds so hard, tedious and relentless. Like being on an assembly line

I am so sorry about your cat, heartbreaking and what a horrible shock

I used to usually cook a chicken risotto a lot on the Monday as we often had chicken on the Sunday. He liked this particularly. Chops. Some savoury mince and potatoes and veg. I used to use some old cookery books my mum had. The poor man had to eat a few ‘au gratin’ dishes. But he ate everything happily. Spare ribs with almonds was one I remember. Boiled potatoes were usual. We didn’t eat much pasta then or pizzas really. I didn’t play with the deep fat fryer until I was a few years older. By then I had gone onto curries too. He would usually finish by saying ‘that was absolutely delicous’. God I miss him.
Your children could start off with pasta and pizza. When you do something it builds confidence. Which is brilliant and leaks into other parts of life.

Yeah. Do it for a while then get bored of the recipes repeating and all the tiny bits of plastic….

Same here, I used to love cooking, have taught myself to cook most things and consider myself to be competent and reasonably skilled in the kitchen, but these days I'd live on crisps and sandwiches if only it wasn't so unhealthy,

This is super impressive! Six weeks in advance, with expiry dates factored in!!! I want to be you when I grow up!!

We do a weekly 'menu' at the same time we do the big shop.
Gets a bit repetitive, but we have an exercise book which has the 'menu' on one page and shopping list on the page opposite. At least if we can't think of what we fancy to eat, we can Flick back through the book for inspiration

Seeing as ds eats different food to me and dh, even though i have the time I’m beyond sick of it!

I do it by the day of the week.
Monday is leftovers from Sunday’s roast.
Tuesday is fish, a Wednesday is chicken, Thursday beef, Friday pizza, etc

I have a very well stocked larder and freezer. I portion out chopped chicken, and sauces separately, so on a Wednesday morning, I take out the chicken to defrost. It could end up as a stirfry, a curry, chicken chasseur, chicken à la king, Alfredo, etc depending on my mood. Most weekday meals are just a matter of assembling the parts.

Thursday’s dinner starts with ragu and can end up as bolognese, chilli, tacos, lasagne.

When I cook from scratch, I cook volume and freeze. It means that most of the time, I only cook what I feel like making, which helps reduce the drudgery.

This wouldn't work for me because our lives are so busy I don't always know who's in or out or how much time I have to cook. It's no good me planning a complicated dinner for 5 only to find two are out and I only have 20 mins and need to make pesto pasta or frozen pizza! I don't meal plan, I just have a decent stock of basics and only ever buy frozen meat and fish so I can decide on the day what's going to work. If I bought fresh meat/fish stuff would definitely end up being thrown away. Also I rarely follow recipes so mostly make food based on what I have rather than buying ingredients specifically for a recipe.

I absolutely love cooking but STILL I’m sick of the deciding.

Same every week, I ask the family “any ideas or requests for dinners next week?” “Don’t care.”

So it’s down to me.

They do care, what they mean is “can’t be bothered to think, you think for us.”

And yesterday I offered them crispy fried chilli tofu with kimchi and stir fried veg and they all said NO WAY since apparently tofu is “gross” (it really isn’t).

So there I am, figuring out how to work in a portion of oily fish, and how to make sure they are getting enough dark green vegetables, and avoid UPFs, and how to do this all on a budget whilst providing variety and stretching the kids’ boundaries so they’ll try something new.

And then I buy delicious healthy cheap food and they won’t even attempt to eat it.

But honestly I cannot face another week of staring at the meal plan like it’s a really poor remake of Groundhog Day.

We eat a lot of "on toast" 🙂

So sorry to hear your horrible news. It bloody hurts. Hope someone is giving you a big hug x

Oh @Barney16 i wish my kids and dh would be like this!

Beans on toast, poached eggs on toast, mushrooms on toast, cheese on toast, sardines on toast, jam on toast, toast with soup, toast with pate. I could never persuade my kids that’s a meal. I have gone wrong somewhere!

@sprigatito that’s desperately sad, I’m sorry you lost your cat. Life is just really crappy sometimes.

Have a three week plan and stick to it. Yes it might be 25degrees but you are having stew because that’s today’s dinner.
Let it cool down if you want cold food 😂

i've 20 years of cooking for several dcs, 10 of those as a single parent, and this thread struck a chord as just a few days ago i realised i'd hit a wall with it all.

I hate cooking 🤣 Always have done. On a personal level food/eating doesn't interest me in the slightest. So the planning, shopping, actual cooking then clearing up makes me despair.

I can honestly say i've fed the offspring well over the years and they all have pretty good diets. And they can and do cook themselves. But the moment they've all flown the nest i'll happily never use a cooker again.

Has anyone got any suggestions for low carb meals that don’t involve much cooking or chopping?

Do, but not the noodles !
The only teaching I ever had was at school. With old fashioned cookery teachers. Where you made apple pie and things like Cornish pasties from scratch. I watched mum do things.
Learning five simple dishes is a good plan. Hopefully they will want to do it once they get one under their belt.

That's why I started going to the gym 3 nights a week. Not my dinner, not my problem!

Agree. There is something calming about the predictability of set meals on set days. I remember as a child it would always give me a lift to remember it was Thursday, egg and chips day.

This is why we meal plan weekly. It's so much easier than playing a guessing game. I genuinely could not handle the stress of deciding what to eat every day.

Its much better having a miniature stress every Saturday planning it all in one go.

Yeah, also coming down to the regular sight of my DH with the fridge open just staring into it, with no idea how long he’s been there, and the inevitable roll call of uninspiring ideas based on its contents. Worse still if any DC are in the vicinity to veto all options on the spot, lamenting the final decision with a “nooooooooooo but I HATE prawns”…

We need a meal planner. No, we need to use the meal planner we have.

3 DC and 2 have left home now and 18yr old DD likes to cook her own food. No partner so just me, and omg what a release it is to no longer have to think what to cook. I regularly eat the same thing for days on end or have something basic as after years of the dreaded ‘what’s for dinner’ I am so happy i’m free from that now!