anyone else feel like they spend their every waking hour cooking food!?

[Toowittoowoo]

I'm so sick of cooking! I really enjoyed weaning DD1 and would spend her naps batch cooking baby friendly food for us all to eat, all cooked from scratch. Weaning DD2 seems less of a joy and just sooo much work to get meals on the table. I seem to be thinking constantly about food and meal planning but it all seem to be late and a slight disaster despite my best intentions!

Anyone else finding it all a bit of a slog?

How is it more work? I cook for all of us in the evening and DS2 (6 months) sits at the table with us and has finger foods followed by some fruit/yoghurt, and then I save a portion of dinner to blend up for his lunch the next day. Or if not suitable he has a jar of something.

I definitely found the cleaning up to be seemingly endless, but the prep wasn't too bad. DD has mostly eaten what we've had. We never puréed anything.

Yeah i don't think its too much tbh.

dd (10 months) has finger food for her lunch (sandwich etc) and then a portion of whatever we have had the night before (lasagne, spag bol, cottage pie, chicken pasta etc etc).

DS just had our leftovers from the night before. Never bothered making special baby purées as I'm just too lazy. No extra work at all

by baby friendly food I was refering to things like cottage and lasagne. Not sure how the rest of you have time to cook such things, but well done!

I'm glad it is just me who is inadequate.

Didn't mean to make you feel inadequate. But im not cooking any extra food than inwas before dd was here. Just cooking a slightly larger meal each night so there's enough for her. No extra cooking required.

what did you eat before dc?

Aw OP - no need to feel inadequate!

I agree with others though that if you're all eating the same food here's no "extra" work. Would it help to batch cook? We often make 3 fish pies at a time and they get tastier in the freezer

I tend to buy a big pack of mince and cook a load for the freezer. Week days it would be spag bol for dinner, I'd save something more time consuming like lasagne for the weekend!

I also use loads of cheats - frozen diced onions, jarred garlic/chilli, tinned potatoes for omelettes/curries etc

Could you have one day a week where you batch cook and put lots if things in the freezer?

I tend to make fish pie, lasagne, curry, cottage pie, risotto etc with minimum seasoning. My partner has done for his dinner and then I portion up the rest into little containers and freeze. I do this pretty regularly then it's a case of defrosting and adding some veggies on the side.

Most of the time there is always something I can defrost for my son but he also shares our dinners sometimes, has sausage, beans on toast, scrambled egg etc at other times.

Another thing I do is make 'special yogurt' which is basically left over fruity porridge from breakfast at the bottom, some mashed banana or chopped fruit mixed with Greek yogurt as the next layer and either shop bought or homemade purée on top. Then I chop up some pine nuts and sprinkle them on top. This is really quick and has protein in it as well as filling things like porridge and is really yummy. So if it's all he has for a few hours I know he is ok till I can get something more savoury into him.

OP you're definitely not inadequate and doing way more than I ever did. I imagined myself making special meals for DS and freezing them, but in the end it turned out that he preferred to have what we were having. I never once prepared a "baby friendly" meal. We eat all sorts - most things are either "mush" or finger food aren't they.

I found it a bit overwhelming too tbh OP. I did more purees to start with and it was a massive pain. Found short cuts though. As others have said, save a bit of suitable meals that you cook for the rest of the family, like cottage pie or bolognese, and freeze a couple of small portions. When we have meals with mashed potato/sweet potato again I do extra and freeze a few ice cube tray portions of the excess. Fish is another one that's easy, a portion of salmon takes 2 minutes in the microwave, serve flaked up with mash and peas/broccoli.

I also buy some pre-cut veg (fresh and frozen) so at least save some time peeling and cutting! I promise it does get easier as they get older if you're not doing completely blw to start with.