Dealing with family dinner every day for the rest of your life!

[Anonymous]

How do you deal with this as a full time working mom? Everyone looks to you for dinner. No one ever likes what you make. You don’t have room in your brain to decide on dinner every single night. Tonight I was so distracted with work issues, didn’t have time to make a decent dinner, burned the broccoli and overcooked the pasta. Everyone looking at me pretending to like it. Major fail. I wish we could afford a personal chef. Someone take this off my plate!

[Anonymous]

Ugh, I agree.

[Anonymous]

At least they pretended to like it, OP!
I feel you; it’s awful. I’m counting the days until I am responsible only for feeding myself.

[Anonymous]

Menu planning. I plan it out on Sunday when I get home from grocery shopping. Including timing of meals that will make leftovers for lunch. Then I stick with that unless something happens to disrupt it, in which case the backup is scrambled eggs, salad or fruit, and bread.

The menu is posted for all to see and children who whine about it don’t get to have input the following week. It’s not perfect but it mostly works. Also, freezer - if I make something with multiple servings I may also freeze part and haul it out a month later. Like soup or stew.

[Anonymous]

Career nanny here. This is what I have done for all my nanny families (and a few friends who are busy moms):

1) Come up with a list of 18 meals your family at least sort of likes. This is 6 meals a week plus one day of leftovers or takeout.

I like to break it down by day so like every Sunday is something I have to bake in the oven, every Monday is a crock pot meal, Tuesday soup/salad, Wednesday sheet pan dinner, Thursday pasta, Friday stir fry, something like that.

You now have a Week 1 menu, Week 2 menu and Week 3 menu.

2) Write out a shopping list for ingredients for each week. Depending on how often you like to shop, break it into two lists (Sun-Tuesday and Wed-Friday for example).

Going forward shop according to the list and make whatever is on the list for that night. Your family in never eating any particular meal more than on e every 21 days so you can do this for years and nobody will because absolutely bored of a specific food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Menu planning. I plan it out on Sunday when I get home from grocery shopping. Including timing of meals that will make leftovers for lunch. Then I stick with that unless something happens to disrupt it, in which case the backup is scrambled eggs, salad or fruit, and bread.

The menu is posted for all to see and children who whine about it don’t get to have input the following week. It’s not perfect but it mostly works. Also, freezer - if I make something with multiple servings I may also freeze part and haul it out a month later. Like soup or stew.

You are my hero!

[Anonymous]

Delegate. Is there a significant other? They need to be in charge of dinner at least two or three nights a week. Are the kids 7 or older? Each one who is needs to cook one night a week.

Also, some families plan the weeks' dinners together, so everyone has input and understands it might not be their choice one night but it will be another night.

[Anonymous]

How old are your children? I was helping make dinner when I was ten years old and taught my children to help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Delegate. Is there a significant other? They need to be in charge of dinner at least two or three nights a week. Are the kids 7 or older? Each one who is needs to cook one night a week.

Also, some families plan the weeks' dinners together, so everyone has input and understands it might not be their choice one night but it will be another night.

7 seems really early to be cooking and in charge of dinner. Helping, yes, my kids have done that since they were 3, but actually cooking and in charge of dinner?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Career nanny here. This is what I have done for all my nanny families (and a few friends who are busy moms):

1) Come up with a list of 18 meals your family at least sort of likes. This is 6 meals a week plus one day of leftovers or takeout.

I like to break it down by day so like every Sunday is something I have to bake in the oven, every Monday is a crock pot meal, Tuesday soup/salad, Wednesday sheet pan dinner, Thursday pasta, Friday stir fry, something like that.

You now have a Week 1 menu, Week 2 menu and Week 3 menu.

2) Write out a shopping list for ingredients for each week. Depending on how often you like to shop, break it into two lists (Sun-Tuesday and Wed-Friday for example).

Going forward shop according to the list and make whatever is on the list for that night. Your family in never eating any particular meal more than on e every 21 days so you can do this for years and nobody will because absolutely bored of a specific food.

You are also my hero!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Delegate. Is there a significant other? They need to be in charge of dinner at least two or three nights a week. Are the kids 7 or older? Each one who is needs to cook one night a week.

Also, some families plan the weeks' dinners together, so everyone has input and understands it might not be their choice one night but it will be another night.

7 seems really early to be cooking and in charge of dinner. Helping, yes, my kids have done that since they were 3, but actually cooking and in charge of dinner?

I did it, and my kids have done it. The only thing they get help with is lifting/carrying heavy pots or cookware while hot. Like taking a roast chicken out of the oven. Or a huge pot of boiling pasta off the stove.

[Anonymous]

Is there another adult who can share cooking duties with you? I'm sorry you're overwhelmed, OP. Working mothers are unfairly burdened, even in 2025. A single mother I know used to cook every Sunday for the week, and put everything in neat labeled boxes in the fridge, categorized by protein, carb or veggies, so that her teens could mix and match for their school lunchboxes. Her fridge was a marvel of organization. I never got to that level, and my husband also cooked a bit when the kids were little: we each figured out a few emergency dishes we could do on *those* nights. But it's normal to have misses, OP. Your family doesn't think the worse of you for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Delegate. Is there a significant other? They need to be in charge of dinner at least two or three nights a week. Are the kids 7 or older? Each one who is needs to cook one night a week.

Also, some families plan the weeks' dinners together, so everyone has input and understands it might not be their choice one night but it will be another night.

7 seems really early to be cooking and in charge of dinner. Helping, yes, my kids have done that since they were 3, but actually cooking and in charge of dinner?

My kids were doing a lot of cooking by 7, but supervising a 7 year making dinner “by themselves” is just as much work and takes twice as long as cooking myself. It’s not a solution to OP’s problem of being burnt out from too much cooking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Menu planning. I plan it out on Sunday when I get home from grocery shopping. Including timing of meals that will make leftovers for lunch. Then I stick with that unless something happens to disrupt it, in which case the backup is scrambled eggs, salad or fruit, and bread.

The menu is posted for all to see and children who whine about it don’t get to have input the following week. It’s not perfect but it mostly works. Also, freezer - if I make something with multiple servings I may also freeze part and haul it out a month later. Like soup or stew.

try not to shop, plan, and cook on same day

[Anonymous]

Honestly, lower your standards. It’s ok to use shortcuts. I work part-time and find it difficult to impossible to cook on work nights. Here are a few easy assembly meals:
Frozen chicken tenders (there are healthier less processed brands) and fries
Rotisserie chicken with bagged salad
Mexican bowls (microwaveable rice, precooked chicken, cheese, black beans and avocado)
Quesadillas
Or bring in pizza