Freshly cooked meals for children? How often a week?

[Mum84762002]

How often are you cooking freshly cooked meals and how often are you cooking frozen food for your children?

By fresh I refrigerated meat/fish etc.

Thank you!

In my head it does!

Our week is similar to this. Roast dinner on Sundays, pizza midweek on office day, pasta dish once a week. We cook from scratch 5/6 nights a week but do sometimes use short cuts

I might buy meat and freeze it. Does that count?

I never buy meat already frozen though.

Frozen meat and fish is fine! Just because it's been frozen, doesn't mean it's been ultra processed.

Mine gets turkey dinosaurs occasionally and maybe pizza but most fresh stuff. She doesn't eat meat all the time though - she loves plain pasta, veg and garlic bread

Do you not eat on Tuesdays?!

Frozen food isn’t bad. I think your are confusing frozen ready meals with frozen veg/meat etc

Here’s some examples of easy meals:

Egg fried rice and veg (note: microwave rice is a nice cheat here and is not a UPF according to Tim Spector)
Egg and home made chips and veg
Chicken thighs (bone in- cheaper) with either lemon and honey mustard marinade or rosemary and roast veg. Red onion takes a sec to chop roughly, chuck a packet of cherry tomatoes and some mushrooms or other veg in the tray
Salmon with corn on the cob and green veg - super quick and easy, though quite expensive I grant you
Roast veg pasta, or carbonara with side of veg
Spag bol (can make a large batch, get two packets of mince, and this will do a few meals in freezer- bulk out the sauce with veg and lentils for health)
Chili con carne - see above
Tuna pasta bake - BBC have a good recipe

Thought I’d post my regular meals as I cook regularly kind of from scratch (not averse to the odd jar of pesto etc) but they’re simple and not fancy.

I don’t think there’s any difference at all. Budget frozen chicken breast is the same as budget refrigerated chicken breast. Organic frozen chicken breast is the same as organic refrigerated chicken breast. How cold it is has no impact on the quality of the meat.

There’s nothing wrong with frozen meat at all.

Every day apart from Saturday.

Typically our weekly menu is similar to this one:

Mon - roast dinner left overs turned into wraps.

Tue- chicken and potato salad

wed- Jacket potatoes with baked beans and grated cheese/ tuna mayo

Thurs- veg lasagne with garlic bread

Friday- cod parcels in tomato sauce, with rice and steamed veg

Saturday- take away

Sunday -roast dinner

4-5 times a week maybe depending on what clubs are happening and how much time we have so kids have freezer tapas - fish fingers / nuggets or a pizza.

rest of the week we tend to do:

mon - spag bol
tues - curry of some kind (try & alternate meat & veggie)
weds - grandparent does dinner for kids but always home cooked
thurs - risotto or something with orzo pasta as they love it!
fri - freezer tapas (football training)
sat - takeaway (or fakeaway if I cba)
sun - roast

We pretty much always eat home-cooked meals with the odd (read once a month) takeaway. I make large batches so I cook one night, leftovers the next, cook next night, and so on.

Same here.

Everyday.

We might have something from the freezer a couple of times a week - for example fries with something cooked from fresh or maybe pizza or similar. Whatever is from the freezer will be served with fresh veg or salad. Not all frozen food is processed crap though.. we often batch cook and freeze stuff to use later in the week.

most days. Sometimes they have some gnocci and pesto or similar which obv isn’t from scratch.

But I enjoy cooking very much, so it’s no big deal. My house is an absolute tip. Some people have theirs in order and make more convenient food. We all just put our priorities in slightly different places but it’s very difficult to do it all.

Every day. I’m divorced and do 50/50 so every other night which isn’t too bad. I’m pretty lazy with it though. Beef is on special at Tesco at £6.75 a kilo so a kilo of that in air fryer for an hour. Purple sprouting brocolli and kale also on special so simmer in a big pan for five minutes. Microwave mash I did mention I was lazy. Beef juice drizzled on top of mash and veg. I do a lot of similar cooking just substitute salmon or chicken for beef. Mash for rice or pasta.

I do make my own burgers/ meatballs with mince From the butcher, supermarket mince is really odd since they started vacuum packing it. Pasta sauce is a can of plum tomatoes, a can cherry tomatoes, lots of garlic and herbs.

Six days a week and one day a week they have fish fingers but that would be the only frozen food they would have and with mash and veg not chips. I have three of us eating three meals a day seven days a week at home and one more eating lunch at pre-school mon-Fri, it’s really time consuming but it’s something I prioritise

Example of this week- we are veggies.

Monday- super green spaghetti
Tuesday- one pot lemon and broccoli pasta
Wednesday- faux Chinese
Thursday- curry
Friday- fajitas only thing I buy is the tortilla wraps although did used to make but such a faff
Saturday- homemade pizzas (have an oven outside now which is amazing!)
Sunday- roast

I have a 14 month old. 3 days a week, nursery feed her and I just give milk/snacks. I’ll cook maybe 3-4 meals a week, but she does have a frozen pre made meal most weeks, if we’ve run late or I’ve not had time to shop and cook. I buy Lume & Wild toddler pots, she loves them and I think they’re pretty healthy!

Yeah we harvest the seasonal ingredients from our vegetable patch, self mill the grain into flour, and have it all on the table by 6pm every day.
However in the real worl, dinner is often cereal, bread buns (home baked), or whatever we have lying around. 5 a day is an optimistic idea.
However we are all still alive and mostly healthy!

Daily. It’s not a biggie - we both work full time and I love cooking as a release around 6 pm. They eat what we eat, thrown together in 15 mins.

Every day. Surely that's basic parenting. I'm a teacher work full time single parent. I batch cook weekends. Lots of simple easy meals can be cooked quickly - like pasta, fish, boiled potatoes and steamed veg. It's not that exciting but it's healthy.

Menu this week so far -

Monday: chicken mince kebabs and wraps
Tuesday: was Bengali New Year’s Day so butter chicken, pulao, veggie curry
Wednesday today: sausage and broccoli linguine
Tomorrow Thursday: Tandoori chicken with pittas
Friday: Salmon pasta
Saturday: pizza, chicken tray bake
Sunday: Easter roast - Greek theme lamb Kleftiko