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

[Anonymous]

I’m so agree OP.

Just wait until kids are older and (1) you never know if they will be home for dinner; (2) if they just had Chipotle one hour before dinner; (3) if they will come down within 45 minutes or you calling them to dinner. And they expect some great door dash mean every time.

It really is frustrating and I wish they could take it off my plate …

Then one goes to college and you go to make their favorite meal and they aren’t there.. you go to grab their favorite chips at the store and…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have lots of thoughts and they may not work for you but I’ve always worked full-time, as has my husband, and our twins are 10 so I haven’t been doing this forever but it’s been a while.

- Your husband needs to help with this responsibility. There is no reason he can’t be equally in charge of food. If his work schedule doesn’t allow him to actually cook at dinner time, he can still come up with meals, place a pick up grocery order, prep stuff, etc.
- Your kids need to also take responsibility for this if they are old enough to talk. They should each come up with a dinner once a week. It is not your job to feed multiple people with no input or help. You have a job. You have other things you do. This shouldn’t be all on you.
- You don’t need to have a perfectly balanced dinner all the time. Pizza is fine. Cereal is fine. Don’t strive for perfection, it’ll drive you crazy. It may seem weird to have a banana on the side of a pasta dish but if you don’t have time to steam broccoli, it’s ok. And, gasp, if you serve a dinner that doesn’t have produce on the side, that’s also ok. No one is going to get scurvy because they didn’t have a fruit or vegetable that night.
- Make easier food. Get a rotisserie chicken instead of making one from scratch, for example. Buy pre-chopped vegetables. Do what you can to make the steps easier sometimes.
- Make dinners that allow for customization. We eat a lot of Mexican food, so every week we grill a big batch of chicken, cook peppers and onions, make guacamole, do a huge pot of rice, and make black beans (from a can, I’m not soaking them for hours or anything). From that we get multiple meals that people can customize. Burritos, fajitas, nachos, quesadillas, bowls, salads, etc. I do similar with Asian dishes - sauté vegetables, cook some chicken and often beef, buy some frozen potstickers. Then we can have stir fry, fried rice, potstickers, meatballs, noodles, etc. Depending on the sauce you want to put on, you can make it Korean, Chinese, Thai, etc. That way everyone gets the flavors (I like spicy, my husband prefers salty) and consistency (one kid likes rice, the other prefers noodles) they want.

Cereal is not a fine dinner. WTF.

[Anonymous]

Let me give a shoutout to the app Paprika, which I have been using for using for years (it costs money and is worth every penny). You store all your recipes on there, you can pin your recipes your making that week and even schedule them day by day (I only pin). When select the recipes for the week, it automatically adds ingredients to your grocery list (you can remove any ingredient you already have).

Everyone in the family has the app - they can see what’s for dinner for the week and more importantly they can any items they want / need to the grocery list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have lots of thoughts and they may not work for you but I’ve always worked full-time, as has my husband, and our twins are 10 so I haven’t been doing this forever but it’s been a while.

- Your husband needs to help with this responsibility. There is no reason he can’t be equally in charge of food. If his work schedule doesn’t allow him to actually cook at dinner time, he can still come up with meals, place a pick up grocery order, prep stuff, etc.
- Your kids need to also take responsibility for this if they are old enough to talk. They should each come up with a dinner once a week. It is not your job to feed multiple people with no input or help. You have a job. You have other things you do. This shouldn’t be all on you.
- You don’t need to have a perfectly balanced dinner all the time. Pizza is fine. Cereal is fine. Don’t strive for perfection, it’ll drive you crazy. It may seem weird to have a banana on the side of a pasta dish but if you don’t have time to steam broccoli, it’s ok. And, gasp, if you serve a dinner that doesn’t have produce on the side, that’s also ok. No one is going to get scurvy because they didn’t have a fruit or vegetable that night.
- Make easier food. Get a rotisserie chicken instead of making one from scratch, for example. Buy pre-chopped vegetables. Do what you can to make the steps easier sometimes.
- Make dinners that allow for customization. We eat a lot of Mexican food, so every week we grill a big batch of chicken, cook peppers and onions, make guacamole, do a huge pot of rice, and make black beans (from a can, I’m not soaking them for hours or anything). From that we get multiple meals that people can customize. Burritos, fajitas, nachos, quesadillas, bowls, salads, etc. I do similar with Asian dishes - sauté vegetables, cook some chicken and often beef, buy some frozen potstickers. Then we can have stir fry, fried rice, potstickers, meatballs, noodles, etc. Depending on the sauce you want to put on, you can make it Korean, Chinese, Thai, etc. That way everyone gets the flavors (I like spicy, my husband prefers salty) and consistency (one kid likes rice, the other prefers noodles) they want.

Cereal is not a fine dinner. WTF.

Oh stop, a bowl of cereal for dinner once in a while is absolutely fine. The PP didn't suggest cereal for dinner every night. Show a little grace to others and assume good intent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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!

Home chef has both cooked meals and meal kits for you to prepare yourself - plus many options you can customize

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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!

I hate to tell you that it only gets worse and I wish I had a magic bullet.

I think you decide what works for you and pretty much tell your family they are going along. Or offer a couple of choices that you can live with and have them vote and agree. I'm talking about everything from meal planning to cooking to shopping to cleaning up.

I also think kids over 10 should be in charge of one meal with the other parent supervising. As they get older they are fully in charge of a meal a week. My 18 year cooks for us at least once a week.

As to people not liking it, too bad. They are free to take over the task. Otherwise they can find something else to eat and clean up after themselves as well.

[Anonymous]

So, I make my kids and H get involved with dinners not necessarily because it's easier for me but because I need them to understand what a pain in the butt it is planning and cooking meals so they stop complaining.

On weekends everyone has to meet with me and everyone picks 2 recipes they'd like that week. That way, even if they don't like the other 5 dinners as much, they get 2 they really like (including me, because I also hate what the kids and H like, so I get 2 meals that I really love and it makes me feel less resentful).

Grocery shopping is done as a family. If you want special snacks or whatever, you come with me. If you can't be bothered to put the screen down and get off your butt for an hour, you don't want the chips all that bad.

Everybody helps cook "their" 2 meals that they picked. If they're not cooking, they're setting the table or cleaning up the living room. No screens until things are tidied and table is set.

If you don't like something for dinner, you're welcome to make yourself something, but I won't make it for you. I won't force anyone to eat anything they dislike, but also, I won't be forced to make something for you. Even our littlest kids can make themselves a ham & cheese sandwich. Our 13yo will make herself an omelette or makes a big batch of a soup she likes on the weekends to eat throughout the week.

[Anonymous]

I am SAHM of teenagers (I know, I know) and I still hate this. I do it because I 100% view it as part of my job, along with most of the rest of the house, but I just want to say that having the time doesn’t magically make you want to do it. I don’t really even mind the shopping or the actual cooking, it’s the deciding and then like a PP said, figuring out which nights anyone is even going to be home or want to eat. In always seem to end up with either too many meals planned or too few. My husband tends to miss a couple nights a week too due to either actual work or BD events.

Anyway, #solidarity. My least favorite question is still probably “what’s for dinner?”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have lots of thoughts and they may not work for you but I’ve always worked full-time, as has my husband, and our twins are 10 so I haven’t been doing this forever but it’s been a while.

- Your husband needs to help with this responsibility. There is no reason he can’t be equally in charge of food. If his work schedule doesn’t allow him to actually cook at dinner time, he can still come up with meals, place a pick up grocery order, prep stuff, etc.
- Your kids need to also take responsibility for this if they are old enough to talk. They should each come up with a dinner once a week. It is not your job to feed multiple people with no input or help. You have a job. You have other things you do. This shouldn’t be all on you.
- You don’t need to have a perfectly balanced dinner all the time. Pizza is fine. Cereal is fine. Don’t strive for perfection, it’ll drive you crazy. It may seem weird to have a banana on the side of a pasta dish but if you don’t have time to steam broccoli, it’s ok. And, gasp, if you serve a dinner that doesn’t have produce on the side, that’s also ok. No one is going to get scurvy because they didn’t have a fruit or vegetable that night.
- Make easier food. Get a rotisserie chicken instead of making one from scratch, for example. Buy pre-chopped vegetables. Do what you can to make the steps easier sometimes.
- Make dinners that allow for customization. We eat a lot of Mexican food, so every week we grill a big batch of chicken, cook peppers and onions, make guacamole, do a huge pot of rice, and make black beans (from a can, I’m not soaking them for hours or anything). From that we get multiple meals that people can customize. Burritos, fajitas, nachos, quesadillas, bowls, salads, etc. I do similar with Asian dishes - sauté vegetables, cook some chicken and often beef, buy some frozen potstickers. Then we can have stir fry, fried rice, potstickers, meatballs, noodles, etc. Depending on the sauce you want to put on, you can make it Korean, Chinese, Thai, etc. That way everyone gets the flavors (I like spicy, my husband prefers salty) and consistency (one kid likes rice, the other prefers noodles) they want.

Cereal is not a fine dinner. WTF.

I agree with you. But also, before I had a husband and kids I had cereal or yogurt and granola for dinner all of the time.
I miss that sometimes.

My husband cooks and my kids help cook and we go out or get takeout or whatever. But sometimes, I just don’t even want to do the whole family dinner sit around the table and eat a big meal thing. I mean, we have been doing this every day for the last 3,000 days. Can we take a night off?

[Anonymous]

Everyone looks to you for dinner

Sorry to say this but, your fault. Teens can cook. Husband should cook. You can completely stop cooking, except for feeding yourself. I know that's an extreme but by saying it, you can find some rhythm in-between.

[Anonymous]

and that includes grocery shopping

[Anonymous]

Delegate, plan and redefine your family’s expectations of ‘dinner’. It can be sandwiches, salads with protein, omelette, leftovers, oatmeal and fruit …. Lower everyone’s expectations. Try to do 3-4 traditional dinner meals, order out/prepared meals, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have lots of thoughts and they may not work for you but I’ve always worked full-time, as has my husband, and our twins are 10 so I haven’t been doing this forever but it’s been a while.

- Your husband needs to help with this responsibility. There is no reason he can’t be equally in charge of food. If his work schedule doesn’t allow him to actually cook at dinner time, he can still come up with meals, place a pick up grocery order, prep stuff, etc.
- Your kids need to also take responsibility for this if they are old enough to talk. They should each come up with a dinner once a week. It is not your job to feed multiple people with no input or help. You have a job. You have other things you do. This shouldn’t be all on you.
- You don’t need to have a perfectly balanced dinner all the time. Pizza is fine. Cereal is fine. Don’t strive for perfection, it’ll drive you crazy. It may seem weird to have a banana on the side of a pasta dish but if you don’t have time to steam broccoli, it’s ok. And, gasp, if you serve a dinner that doesn’t have produce on the side, that’s also ok. No one is going to get scurvy because they didn’t have a fruit or vegetable that night.
- Make easier food. Get a rotisserie chicken instead of making one from scratch, for example. Buy pre-chopped vegetables. Do what you can to make the steps easier sometimes.
- Make dinners that allow for customization. We eat a lot of Mexican food, so every week we grill a big batch of chicken, cook peppers and onions, make guacamole, do a huge pot of rice, and make black beans (from a can, I’m not soaking them for hours or anything). From that we get multiple meals that people can customize. Burritos, fajitas, nachos, quesadillas, bowls, salads, etc. I do similar with Asian dishes - sauté vegetables, cook some chicken and often beef, buy some frozen potstickers. Then we can have stir fry, fried rice, potstickers, meatballs, noodles, etc. Depending on the sauce you want to put on, you can make it Korean, Chinese, Thai, etc. That way everyone gets the flavors (I like spicy, my husband prefers salty) and consistency (one kid likes rice, the other prefers noodles) they want.

Cereal is not a fine dinner. WTF.

My kids are at college and I am DONE with dinner.

Cereal is a great dinner.

[Anonymous]

Yogurt is a great dinner. Thinking you need to know and be in charge of what everyone else in your family eats, that's a horrible way to live - certainly not when others are adults.

[Anonymous]

I love meal planning and cooking so..,

Sunday: H grills steaks, potato, salad
M: chicken dinning I have 10 recipes on rotation
T: pasta night… I have 5 on rotation, one is shrimp
W: pork: sausage and peppers, chops, loin,
Th: leftovers or make yourself nuggets of a hit pocket or something not my problem
F; order in

I cook 3 times a week and that schedule worked for us.

Do you just hate cooking or the planning.

Do a program for a month or 2 if you need a break.