Anonymous wrote:This OP and I agree with the above! Sandwiches are cooking. Heck, even putting a Costco lasagna in the oven and putting some vinaigrette on grocery store salad mix counts as making dinner in my book. Microwaving it is borderline

Really…

I have cooked less often at certain stages. In the thick of sports season when I didn’t have a lot of time in the kitchen my favorites were frozen chicken tenders and fries, quesadillas, bagged salad with pre-cooked chicken, rotisserie chicken and bringing in pizza. Nowadays Mexican bowls are also popular here made with rice, chicken, beans, cheese, avocado and whatever other veggies we have. I’m actually a pretty decent cook and so i will cook a “real” meal a few times a week but I am pretty burned out on being responsible for dinner and expect that I will give it all up when we have an empty nest unless I personally feel like cooking. DH can make himself a sandwich or frozen meal or learn to cook!

I love to cook hate to clean up
Empty nest now
I cook DH cleans up
Sometimes it’s elaborate sometimes it’s chicken tacoes from premade chicken Trader Joe’s or even sandwiches
At 10O degrees I’m not turning on the oven

Sometimes we just make frozen dumplings in soup with store bought chicken or beef and precut veggies .

Tortillas mmake a variety of meals I always have those on handed

My niece was visiting she made pizza out of them or quesadilla's easy and yummy

We cook maybe twice a week.

The rest of the time we heat up a lasagna, throw burgers on the grill, use bagged salads, chop veggies, use Costco chickens, etc.

Sandwiches and heatingup food are not cooking but they are making dinner. Making dinner is anything you do that gets food on the table. Opening up take out containers is making dinner.

Cooking dinner is when you have to prepare the items yourself. Dumping sauce out of a jar isn't cooking. It is ready made.

But who cares if you cook dinner. As long as you get dinner on the table and your family is fed - whether that is with a chef or a take out or heating prepared foods or dumping food out of bags - none of which are you cooking - your family is fed.

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me realize how little I will cook once my kids go to college (2 years away). I love cooking dinner but will need to find another hobby.

My kids are both in college but I still cook a few nights a week for me and DH. It's been challenging to relearn cooking smaller amounts for two people. And I can experiment more with things the kids don't like. We do get take out more when it's just us, mainly because the bill for two people feels more worth it than the cost for four people.

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me realize how little I will cook once my kids go to college (2 years away). I love cooking dinner but will need to find another hobby.

My last kid left for college and most nights are fruit and cereal nights.

My husband cooks proper dinners for himself (he didn’t cook when it would have been useful to the family)

Anonymous wrote:We order out food about 3-4x/week. It’s usually chipotle, chic fil a, Panera, or pizza.
For the other nights, it jar sauce and spaghetti, fried rice from the freezer, black beans and rice, or grilled meat. Only cook from scratch on holidays.

This is astonishly unhealthy. I hope you don't have children in the house.

We usually get a pizza or Chinese once a week. Otherwise we usually eat salmon (air fryer), burgers, pasta, or turkey tacos. We usually also have frozen veggies, microwaved mashed potatoe, or a fresh salad with our meal.

If I don’t have time to cook, we usually have frozen chicken tenders, frozen breaded shrimp, or frozen fish sticks.

My husband thinks I rarely cook anything and am lazy (despite taking care of three kids), but from this thread, it looks like I’m not doing too badly with dinner.

I have outsourced much of the cooking to my teenage children.

One night this week I had sliced roast beef from the deli at Whole Foods, corn on the cob, blueberries and popcorn. Excellent dinner.

DH and I work full time and I hate to cook. We do meals that would curl most of your toes LOL. I just want the kids fed and I don't want to kill myself over a meal the kids are going to complain about anyway. This is just the stage of life we are in now I guess.

I just had a bowl of cheerios with blueberries. It’s hot hot so I don’t want to turn on the oven and I had a salad for lunch, or that’s another of my other no cook go to.

This thread makes me realize how little I will cook once my kids go to college (2 years away). I love cooking dinner but will need to find another hobby.

DH and I used to cook every night and I hope we will again sometime soon but the last year we definitely have less due to life craziness.

Last night we had steamed old bay shrimp from Safeway, store bought corn bread, and bagged salad.

Sometimes we get meals from Costco (pot pie, chicken tacos, etc) or things like French bread and smoked salmon with cream cheese, avocado, and cucumber.

Other semi-prepared stuff from Trader Joe’s.

Occasionally take out.