What do your weekly meals look like for you and your fam? I generally enjoy cooking, what I don't enjoy is the negotiations that come with cooking, and with kids, it's even worse. I'm also the kind of person that could eat the same 5 dishes for a year without much fuss or question. That's the ADHD lodged in my brain for you.

The negotiation, or even the anticipation of negotiations, makes me agitated. If I could, I'd be a food dictator, but that's not how living with people works. It's annoying enough to me that I often push it to the back of my mind and just "figure it out" on the fly. That's not conducive to making good choices, though, only convenient choices.

If I'm going to do most of the cooking, I'll want a schedule of meals, so I can both plan, anticipate, and head-off any objections. I struggle with being assertive on this point, and I'm told often, "We don't need to do that much planning." Which, as someone with ADHD into my late 30s, I know is not true, and I do need that much planning if not more. Structure is something I need, and the kids at this age obviously thrive off structure as well.

So anyway, how do you tackle this? I need to get this sorted out for myself, but also for my kiddos. Kiddo 1 just had an annual checkup and is low on iron, and is growing increasingly picky about food. Kiddo 2 is still in that "I'll try anything in front of me." phase, and getting this sorted out now hopefully means I can avoid the pickiness down the line.

I'm going to cross post this in !neurodiverse@hexbear.net & !food@hexbear.net as I think it has some clear overlap.

    • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]M
      ·
      2 months ago

      I run a spreadsheet with dishes and try to pick ones that we haven't had within the last few weeks. I plan to cook 5 meals a week, with one being a large meal shared across two days (like chili or spaghetti sauce or something). I've got probably 30 recipes that we cycle through, with new ones added every once in a while.

      I just took the opportunity to set up a recipe manager (Recipya for anyone curious) that I hope can help with this. Having to answer "What's for dinner" is hard when I can't even recall recipes I've made and enjoyed.

      I do groceries once a week, so I plan meals into my grocery spreadsheet at that time. Idk how I'd survive if I just tried to keep it loose - I'd buy way too much or too little or stuff would rot.

      I handle dinners and groceries, so there hasn't been any real negotiation to do things this way, it's just how things fell.

      That really feels like the natural outcome of being the primary cook, is you also become the primary grocer too.

      • Hexboare [they/them]
        ·
        2 months ago

        you also become the primary grocer too.

        Once things settle into place you can get away with a pretty quick pick-up orders, no more wandering the halls of the supermarket for hours

        • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]M
          ·
          2 months ago

          I think it will, it can scrape websites in various ways to add recipes to it, which really sets the barrier to entry very low.

    • Hexboare [they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      What does your spreadsheet look like? Trying to mentally visualise how it would work

      • Slatlun@lemmy.ml
        ·
        2 months ago

        There is a sheet for meals, one for ingredients, and one that relates meals to ingredients

        Edit - I wrote a comment on the cross post about a spreadsheet and I thought this was replying to that