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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

And then they come home from college for breaks, and you have to cook for them again!

[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.

Ok, that's easy when you are a nanny and cooking for the family but what about when you aren't a nanny and don't have help?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

And then they come home from college for breaks, and you have to cook for them again!

College age can cook for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for your great tips and encouragement!

[Anonymous]

OP, my kids are in college now. I hated making dinners like you for years but to give you a glimmer of hope, by the time they are in their latter years of high school, it slows down because they are out a lot for dinner and while I miss them away at college, I barely cook now and I love that. It is little talked about here how FREEING that is. Just know it gets better!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

True, but eventually it will pay off. We spent many hours cooking with our kids when they were little (it would have been much faster without them) but now they are fully competent on their own in the kitchen and love cooking (youngest is 9). It’s also good quality time with your kids. I grew up with a mom who cooked alone in the kitchen and I would have much rather hung out with her cooking then instead of watching tv and waiting for dinner to be ready.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ok, that's easy when you are a nanny and cooking for the family but what about when you aren't a nanny and don't have help?

NP. Being a nanny is not easy and maybe don’t have kids if you’re not prepared to feed them.

[Anonymous]

The kids need to learn how to cook.

[Anonymous]

Set a low bar. As long as it’s nutritious it doesn’t need to take forever.
Last night we had baked salmon, steamed broccoli ( steams in bag in microwave) brown rice. Less than 20 mins.
Tonight Costco vegetable/barley soup. I’ll add black beans to it for protein, naan bread to go with it. That’s a 5 min dinner
WG spaghetti with pesto is an easy fav. Can make extra for leftovers too.

[Anonymous]

Are you married?
If so - then the obvious solution here would be to have your hubby take over cooking duties every other evening….or at least on wknds.

If you have no partner, then perhaps you can double your batch when preparing dinner -> then freeze the rest for another meal later in the wk.

Also kids like chicken nuggets, macaroni + cheese, etc. so opting to serve these a few nights a wk is really not a big deal.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

I don't have this hang up. when I was a kid my father had a life threatening illness and my mother had to go back to work. We made stockable meals (3-4 days worth of dinners you could reheat in the microwave). Breakfast was fix your own cereal, lunch make your own sandwich and pack it. I've been cured from that kind of cultural conditioning disease.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

And then they come home from college for breaks, and you have to cook for them again!

My mom worked and when I came home from college and had nothing to do I experimented with cookbook recipes so my mom didn't need to cook dinner while I was home.

[Anonymous]

I’m a working mom of three and I do many of the things the nanny earlier in the post does.

Meal plan on Saturday while making the grocery list. I keep a phone notes app list of all the meals we have in rotation and use that for inspiration if needed. I also review the schedule of activities for the week while making the meal plan. The plan is then posted on the fridge.

If the kids don’t like a meal they can write their suggestion for next week on the paper we keep on the fridge for grocery list and meal ideas for next week.

Dinner consists of the following steps:
Cook
Eat
Clean up from dinner
Check ingredients and prep for tomorrow’s dinner.

Including that last step every night dramatically decreased the amount of “oh no the chicken is frozen” and “someone already ate all the oranges and we are having orange chicken” type errors that regularly occurred before.

[Anonymous]

It sucks, but it’s life. When the last goes to college you’ll finally get a break for a month or two between visits home.
The alternative is to stop cooking, then everyone eats junk and gets sick. No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't have this hang up. when I was a kid my father had a life threatening illness and my mother had to go back to work. We made stockable meals (3-4 days worth of dinners you could reheat in the microwave). Breakfast was fix your own cereal, lunch make your own sandwich and pack it. I've been cured from that kind of cultural conditioning disease.

Thanks for playing.