I actually enjoy cooking and I'm relatively good at it, but there are many days when the "what's the plan?" question sends me over the edge!  It's the routine, it's the idea that you can't skip a night.  UGH

The planning is part of the burden - go back to your Dude and plan together - write a schedule for the week - also, cooking ahead makes the planning easier - some weeks I cook two or three meals on Sunday.  Then the refrigerator DOES actually throw something at me that we can eat.

I actually enjoy cooking and I'm relatively good at it, but there are many days when the "what's the plan?" question sends me over the edge!

That's me. I have gotten really good at cooking--no cookbook required--despite being a home ec flunkie. Seriously, I was terrible at home ec-- because we had to bake, not cook, and I suck at baking.

Anyway, it's planning the meals that I despise. Generally, if DH tells me what to make, I will make it happily, I am just so glad not to have to come up with ideas on my own.

Fortunately, DS is easy to feed-- he eats several kinds of veggies, meat, and fish, and on nights when we want to make something he won't eat, I'm OK giving him chicken nuggets.

I have just about given up getting DH to cook anything. He can broil a marinated pork chop with some help, but he requires so much assitance that I just do it myself most of the time.

she did the exact same thing when I was growing up.  Every day around 3PM she would open up the freezer or fridge and stare at it for awhile, lamenting she didn't know what to cook for our household of 5.  

my hairdresser says she has different days.  Like, Monday=fish, tuesday=chicken, wednesday=pasta, thursday=i forget, and friday=pizza.  i thought that was a really good idea.  people then know what to expect and it's easier making that grocery shopping list!

Oh, how I hate cooking.  

Let me back up. Oh, how I hate grocery shopping. That I've taken care of by switching to online grocery shopping and delivery so all I have to do is click away and magically a guy appears in my kitchen with grocery.

Now, oh how I hate cooking.  When I lived alone, I ate well.  Random things, but all low-fat, protein, quick meals, no problem.  But people here won't eat that type of stuff or it's just feels wrong making eggs every night.  But OTOH, I'm 100% guaranteed that if I cook, the kids won't eat one bite of it, no matter what it is.

I know a lot of older women who won't go near a kitchen because they are so traumatized of having to come up with meals for all of those years.

that I'm pretty anal about menu planning.  I'm completely incapable of staring at a fridge full of food and turning it into dinner.  Sure, I could broil some random meat, steam some veggies, and maybe boil some pasta or rice, but I think that's the most boring way possible to put together a meal, and I really don't want to eat that.

Every Wednesday night, I have a standing 30-45 minute date with my cookbooks and my laptop.  I plan five "real" dinners a week, plus another night with dinner just for the boys (date night), and we eat out as a family once a week or just have leftovers or sandwiches.  I try to look at our calendar for the week when planning meals, and put the really easy meals on busy night.  I make my grocery list on the same page and strikethrough items that I already have in the pantry, then I save the entire thing by date.  I know it sounds insanely regimented, but when I'm having a really busy week, I can just pull up and old menu/grocery list and re-use it.  And it's not like I can't re-arrange the days if I don't feel like cooking whatever is scheduled.  But I know exactly what's in the fridge and pantry and what I can do with it.

The added bonus to really planning stuff out is that I've lost weight and it's really easy to keep track of what I'm eating.  It also stops me from impulse-buying at the grocery store, and we use everything we buy.  Not a lot gets tossed because of spoilage.

I really love food and cooking, but if I had to "plan" or 'choose something from each column,' I might throw myself off a bridge. I want to enjoy my food, not be a slave to it. I hear my friends lament that they need new 'recipes,' and I feel for them. I love to read cookbooks, but I rarely use recipes unless I'm trying something out of the ordinary. Recipes are a form of bondage. You think "Oh I'll make that--but I don't have a lemon, so I can't." It's too frustrating.

For me, there are two keys to dealing with the dinner dilemma.

1. Know how to shop and stock the pantry with staples that will go with any veggies or meats you have. If your kids will only eat chicken and broccoli, you can dress those up in a hundred different ways.  

2. Simplify. Somtimes the simplest food is the best. For example, my kids love spaghetti with parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, pine nuts and parmesan. Stick a caesar salad with that puppy and you've got a beautiful meal that takes all of 20 minutes. Your DH wants more protein? Throw some bacon, beans or grilled chicken on top. You're done.

Here are two ideas. The first is a link to an article by one of my food idols, Mark Bittman (a.k.a., the Minimalist). He's a food writer for the NYTimes and he's a total genius. This list is 101 Simple Meals for Summer. It's worth reading even if you never use any of the ideas. To me it was a great reminder of how simple a meal can be (and often is in other parts of the world). The meat/veg/starch formula doesn't have to be your standard.

The other is this book: How to Cook Without a Book by Pamela Anderson (not THAT Pam Anderson!). I gave it to my sister when she moved into her first place and she said it was really helpful. It covers basic techniques and shopping strategies. Basically the idea is that if you have the right staples around, you can go to the store once a week, buy what's in season, and make a variety of easy meals on the fly.

This is one of my favorite subjects. I could go on all day, but I'll spare you!

much as i love cooking, and I really do, we always have a frozen pizza or a roast stashed away for the night when you absolutely cannot imagine cooking. It helps!

Cooking -- not something that is a talent in my family. Literally, my Mom cooked ONLY on holidays when I was growing up. The rest of the time, either my stepdad cooked (which was rare), or we went out to eat. EVERY. NIGHT. No kidding. My friends used to love coming over to go out to eat, and I used to love going to their house to eat at home! It's a wonder that I'm not as big as a house! ha!

When I left home, I started cooking ... because I was too poor to go out, and I had a little boy I needed to feed good things to. But I wouldn't say I was great at it.

It wasn't until I got married almost 9 years ago that I really started practicing. I made lasagna every single weekend for months until I got it right.

Now, I rely on the crockpot. And my DH does all the grocery shopping, so all I have to do is figure out what makes a meal. Not so bad!

you a "Grocery Shopping Paralysis."

I entered the "I don't know what to make for dinner" phase a few years ago and if that wasn't bad enough, I then tacked on the "I don't know what to purchase to turn ingredients into meals" problem.

I walk through the grocery aisles and go to check out, discovering I have one package of chicken and a bag of pretzels in my cart.  Oops. Can't feed the family for a week on that!

I'm stuck in a major rut.

Luckily, my entire family is ecstatic when I make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.  Three times a week.  Do potato chips count as a vegetable? <gr>

You cook EVERY NIGHT? Yeah, I would dread it too!

I admit, that for a while after I had Eli, we hired someone to come in, make three meals that would last us the whole week. But DH and I agreed that this would be temporary as it is a luxury we ultimately cannot afford. I ended up copying that woman. I now spend Saturdays, while Eli naps, cooking three huge meals that last us the whole week. Sometimes it is a drag. But for the most part, it is relaxing to peruse cookbooks, go food shopping and cook.

A typical menu for me consists of a meal I actually know how to cook without a cookbook -- er, pasta. The second meal is a dish I stole from the cookbook that we liked and I am trying to memorize. The last one is something we have never had before, and let me tell you, there have been stinkers. I am with you Lonestar: cooking does not come naturally to me. I have ended up throwing away burnt food, or seeing DH and the kids ignore it in the fridge. "Why am I cooking, if you all are not eating it?"

My husband: "Um, why aren't YOU eating it?"

"Because it's disgusting." There you go! Have you considered spending one afternoon cooking? Of course, that would mean not minding microwaved leftovers. :-)

and I subscribed to the Dinner Diva website. They give you shopping lists and 6 nights worth of menus a week. (7th day go out, order pizza whatever)

Thye have a bunch of different types of menus you can subscribe to as well, vegetarian, low carb, frugal, all crockpot! I lurve this service. I ordered a one year subscription and then when my year was up I just strated at the begining and made them again! The menus are all seasonally based as well, so you know no fresh tomatoes in the winter or anything.

My husband literally told me, "I have never had a bad meal from this thing." and he is the pickiest eater in my family. They also have lots of substitutions, I don't eat pork for instance, so they tell me what to sub in (usually chicken breasts). I find that we spend less on groceries now too, because I don't buy extra stuff that never gets eaten.

I have been cooking long enough that I can use the recipes as jumping off points too. "No lemon, no problem, what acids do I have? Vinegar and lemon pepper? Sure!" I hate to sound like a commercial, but it really helped me out.

My friend's mom went on a cooking strike for years. Seriously, like 8 years. She would make something for herself when she felt like it, and that was it. She had three boys plus her husband, and they figured it out on their own.  I'm not sure what started it, but I can sympathize with you because I feel the same way. I have to decide what's for breakfast and lunch already! Why do I have to be responsible for dinner too?

Part of living in the sticks is that there is no take-out, not even pizza delivery.  And taking the kids out to eat can only happen about once a week, to save all our sanity.

But, I don't plan the meals all on my own.  Everyone has to come up with dinner for one night during the week.  Saturdays is always pizza. That leaves me with two nights to fill and I can do that.

I have tons of cookbooks but find that we eat a lot of recipes that aren't in cookbooks.  I have a 3-ring binder and I put recipes from magazines, computer, etc in page protected sleeves and that's my main cookbook.  The kids can also flip through that one when they don't know what they want for their night.

I enjoy cooking but doing it every night has become something of a chore.  Kinda like grocery shopping - as soon as it's done, you have to think about starting all over again.

I have relegated cooking to the spirituality aspect of my life, so I don't get harried or resentful. I basically invoke home/hearth imagery and elevate it to almost meditation. And now that my daughter is bigger she is helping me cook and learning too. I remember scraping carrots for my Mom and grating cheese and just talking to her. I still treasure those memories and I want Darling Girl to think of me that way.

Now...if I could get housework into the same sacred space! Or even just IRONING!!!! <grrrr>

whenever DH asks that question, my answer is always, "make you do it!" Consequently, he rarely asks the question anymore.

I do a lot of bulk batch cooking - spaghetti sauce, soups, pesto - and just freeze family-sized portions. Usually, two nights a week are taken care of that way. Then, I always do a curry or a stir fry and because I'm from the "more is more" school of veg-adding, there's always enough for a second night. So that's four nights. Fridays are pizza night. Five nights. On the weekends, DH almost always does one barbeque - sometimes both nights. The seventh night can be a roast chicken (love baking!), or I'll cook something a bit special on Sundays (because I like cooking).

Do you have a croc pot or similar? I mean, if you have to do something you hate, why not do it in large quantities to save yourself the rest of the week?

I'm mostly a SAHM, but I work Saturdays.  So Saturdays is my husband's day to cook. He's a great cook, and did nearly all of the cooking before we had kids because he enjoyed it.  Now that he doesn't do it regularly, though, he finds it very overwhelming. Our rules are that he plans the meal for Saturday (though it can't be a meal I regularly cook), I'll buy ingredients if he tells me before I shop, he cooks, we eat.

Nearly every Saturday, I get home from work and we have a conversation like this one (which we just had this past Saturday):

Him:  So... what should I make for dinner?
Me: I don't care what you make, as long as I'm not involved.
Him: Hmmm... well.... what do you think we should have?
Me: I don't care.  You decide and work it out.
Him: (looking through fridge)  Well, we have all this zucchini, so how about I make that zucchini dish you make that we all really like?
Me: Um, no.  The reason we have all that zucchini is because I'm planning to make that zucchini dish on Monday.
Him: (sighing and looking at the fridge) I guess I have to go to the grocery store.

I also hate planning meals, but I have a system that I like (that sounds kind of anal). I have a three week rotating schedule, and plan three meals a week.  When we get tired of dish, we replace it with a new one.  One meal is a big casserole that always leaves leftovers, my husband cooks one night, and the other nights we'll eat leftovers or just do something simple and kid-friendly (like toast and peanut butter with a side of veggies).

I have a printed out shopping list and it's coded by week.  Every week, I highlight the items I need, and I know if it's "Week 1" on my rotation, I need to highlight all the items with 1 after it.  The shopping list is organized by aisle in the supermarket.

It seems like a crazy system, but it takes most of the stress out of meal planning and shopping for me.  It's not as rigid as it seems, and the schedule tends to go out the window in the summer when we eat more in-season produce, but having a set plan to work from is important to me.

http://www.flickr.com/...