Anonymous wrote:Family of 5 (3 young kids). I’ll cook 5 days a week and we’ll eat out 2 days. Our local church has dinners to go on Wednesdays and we will also get take out on either Friday or Saturday night.

This is a thing? Churches doing weeknight take out? You just swing by on your way home and buy some food?

Me personally? Once or

Anonymous wrote:Family of 6, 4 kids. I cook 4, maybe 5, nights a week. I wish I had energy to do more, but work full-time and dinner falls pretty much all on me since DH doesn’t like to cook. If left to him, kids joke he’d order takeout every night. We order out 1-2 nights a week & 1 night is leftovers. I’m easing kids into 1 night of “fend for yourself” on Fridays to replace leftovers, since even leftover night requires assembly by me. All my kids even younger are capable of getting cereal, sandwich, or soup on their own, so I know they can feed themselves one night.

You could also have the kids plan and execute 1 or 2 nights, if they're old enough. Mine enjoy that.

Try to make something most nights. Many times I will strive to have enough leftovers to make the meal stretch another day...until my oldest teen wipes everything out.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Do many of you have set days for cooking vs dating out/delivery? Or do you just go with the flow?

During the worst of the pandemic, we made Thursdays "takeout Thursday." That seemed better than Friday, because everyone gets takeout on Friday and wait times were so long. It kind of stuck. Now, I would say I cook Sun-Wed, get takeout on Thurs, make something simple and/or have leftovers Friday, then kind of wing it on Saturday. Usually cook, but not always. Kids are older teens so it kind of depends on who is home.

Five nights a week. One night, we'll get takeout, and the other night, I cobble together a meal from leftovers or various other things I have in the fridge.

Family of 6.

I cook 3 nights Tuesday-Thursday, then leftovers on Friday, then takeout on Saturday, then dinner at my mom's house on Sunday, then pizza on Monday.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who cook regularly for families for ~5 people, are there any cooking/recipe blogs that you follow? I am looking to improve my repertoire and am especially interested in kid-friendly recipes.

I got lazy during the pandemic and just decided to go with tried and true recipes for us instead of trying new ones!
We have breakfast for dinner once a week - it's alternates - one week it's egg and one week its pancakes.
We usually do a pasta - either spaghetti and meatballs, ziti, or occaissonaly pesto or something else.
We usually do something with chicken - could be stir fry, cutlets, crockpot
Make our own pizza one night
One night something kind of taco like - I have a quesadilla recipe, tacos, taco casserole recipe, or chicken chili or regular chili that i kind of lump in this category

In the summer we'll grill at least once a week.

I like the recipes on Once Upon a Chef.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who cook regularly for families for ~5 people, are there any cooking/recipe blogs that you follow? I am looking to improve my repertoire and am especially interested in kid-friendly recipes.

We don't have any blogs. Our approach has been to build meals around things we know the kids like, to keep meal components separate so that kids can pick and choose which ones they will eat, and to cook meals large enough that there are usually leftovers from the previous day available as a backup option for any given meal.

I’m also cooking nearly every night since the pandemic and definitely everyone is eating better. Less takeout because it’s gotten more expensive and quality/portion sizes have gone down. But yeah, freaking exhausting to plan, shop for and prepare meals every day.

For those of you who cook regularly for families for ~5 people, are there any cooking/recipe blogs that you follow? I am looking to improve my repertoire and am especially interested in kid-friendly recipes.

I make dinner basically every. single. night. Tonight my husband is at work and I had a 20 second thought about ordering takeout before the storm because it has definitely been a day. Instead I cooked a steak for myself and hotdogs for the kids....is it bad that everyone home was super happy? (And my steak cost the same as basically one entrée)

My spouse and I split cooking duties equally.

I generally plan for 5 dinners to cook a week, one night of take out, and one night of leftovers/winging it.

Family of 5 (3 young kids). I’ll cook 5 days a week and we’ll eat out 2 days. Our local church has dinners to go on Wednesdays and we will also get take out on either Friday or Saturday night.