How about another round of "I hate to cook"??? ugh

I signed up for Cook Smarts because deciding what to cook for dinner is the WORST. It's very easy to adjust the number of servings and diet style (vegetarian/paleo etc). If you don't like a week's menu then you can select anything from the archive. Most of the recipes have been wins.

My favourite is that they make my shopping list for me and easily list the prep I can do in advance. Saves this pregnant, full-time working mama a lot of headaches!

You are my kind of cook! Tonight I actually made enchilada sauce from scratch. I think there were over 10 bottles of different spices. Sure it tasted better, but it was a PITA to make! I only did it because I thought, no plans, and husband is home. Nope! Son decided to cover a work shift for a friend. Right in the middle of finishing the sauce.

Classic Pot Pie, buy the crusts!
Sweet & Spicy Chicken
Crock Pot Teriyaki
BLT chopped salad - I didn't use goat cheese because that's considered a funky ingredient where I live! It was not hard to make the dressing and it really made the salad!
One Pot Wonder Chicken Lo Mein
Salsa Rice Enchiladas - I have made these numerous times. Great to freeze for leftovers.

we grill when it is hot out

Most of what I make that is simple is with ground beef.

I don't really hate to cook, but I am tired of cooking. My husband works until 9-10pm M-F so I either eat by myself or I eat with our great grandson(who is almost one) and he doesn't have much of a palate, yet!

I am just the opposite. I like making my own dressings so I know what is and isn't in it. I even make my own mayo sometimes.

Fajitas are quick and easy.

I really screwed up last week and blew my food budget big time. DD is out of town and DH and I ate take out A LOT! We mostly ate salads, cheap ones at that, but I just didn't have it in my budget. I have no excuse except that I didn't want to cook, so I didn't. I spent my cooking time in the garden. This morning I gave myself a stern talking to and resolved to do better. In that vein, I made my menu for this week that uses only items I already have in the house. Something I'm trying to keep in mind is that DH's kidney dr wants him to eat less animal protein, so I'm going to try to add veggies and decrease the meat.

Today I made a crockpot of sauce. DH has asked if he can have sauce and pasta again tomorrow night and I agreed with the caveat that his morning blood sugar is good. Since we use Dreamfield's pasta and the sauce had no sugar, he should be ok. I should have enough sauce leftover to freeze for at least one more meal, maybe two. It took me less than 20 minutes to get all the ingredients in the crockpot for the sauce and more of that time than I'm going to admit was spent looking for the manual can opener so I could open the freaking huge can of whole tomatoes. Yes, the can opener was right in front of me - literally. It was hanging from a hook under my upper cabinets, right where I was standing. Once the sauce was cooking, I hit the garden. My excuse was I needed some fresh basil for the sauce. LOL I think 20 minutes prep for something we'll get at least 3 meals from is a good deal. Even better, the meal was vegetarian and the next two from the sauce may also be vegetarian.

DD has asked for Mexican for Thursday, so I'll use some of my frozen Mole Chicken for probably tacos. Before DH's diabetes' medication was cut back, I would have made Oh Yvonne's Mexican not Spanish rice as a side dish. Instead, I'll probably throw some black beans in the crockpot tomorrow and use some as a side dish and freeze the rest. We'll have some of the beans as a main dish next week and use some as side dishes in the coming weeks. It won't take me but a couple of minutes to chop the onions and garlic for the black beans and the chicken just has to be heated up. DD may volunteer to do it as she loves to cook Mexican.

Friday night will be pizza. Pizza night is my husband's favorite night of the week. I've got a dough recipe that I can put together in 10 minutes or less. It can rise on the counter until I'm ready to spread it out. We do individual pizzas and I can get 4 small pizzas from one recipe of dough. DD will probably use the extra piece of dough to make breadsticks sometime over the weekend. The only negative to pizza night is I have to use the oven and heat up the kitchen. Still, it's cheaper than takeout pizza and so much better for DH.

Saturday morning we'll make an Apple Baby pancake to share. DH will take a really tiny piece along with a sausage patty. This is his sweet treat for the week and he has to take a walk after eating it. Since we eat breakfast late, DD's and I will just snack mid afternoon, but DH will have to eat something. He might want some sauce and pasta; he'd probably think it was treat.

For supper, we might do some Chicken Tikka Masala that I have in the freezer. All I'll have to cook will be some rice. This is probably the only thing on my list, OP, that violates your too many ingredients request. In my defense, I make up a HUGE batch of CTM spice mix once a year and I make large batches of CTM about every 3-6 months. I cook it in the crockpot in the marinade, then add the actual sauce ingredients at the end. This gives me plenty of sauce to serve over rice or naan. DD will sometimes take the leftover sauce and eat it with naan the next day. I also have a recipe for homemade naan that can be frozen flat and cooked straight from its frozen state. I don't think I have any left in the freezer, so I'll probably make a big enough batch to cook some and freeze some.

Sunday is bagel day. DH goes and gets him a sub and DD and I bagels. If I make it that far without buying anything, I'm going to splurge and have bagels, dammit! We may be going out of town Sunday afternoon so DH can work in another town on Monday. If so, our meals will be covered by our business. DD probably won't go with us since she has just been out of town, but she can cook for herself.

So, now that you see how much stuff I had I the freezer, only needing to be heated up to be eaten, you understand why I'm so upset with myself for blowing my budget, right? I was just lazy and I wanted to play in my garden instead of doing my job. I hate when I have to get on myself. LOL

Marcy

I'm with you, I hate cooking. The real problem is I hate planning, the cooking I could probably live with.

I have 4 "kids" and they live at home,but you never know who will be around and who won't. One works most nights, two have a couple night shifts, but mostly arrive home before dinner. Then you have the likes/dislikes of everyone - I try to plan things that most will eat if they are in. It's really just a pia. When it's just youngest dd and I, I can make a pot of soup and we're in heaven.

It's a struggle, I try to cook the nights that most will be around, but I also let myself off the hook and tell them to fend for themselves too. I really just wish I enjoyed cooking more.

Like grammanisi, I don't hate to cook, but I definitely get tired of it sometimes. My only "secret" is to have stuff in the freezer that can easily be turned into meals without much cooking. For example, when I make black bean and rice burritos, I will make extra filling and freeze it in a zip loc bag. On a night that I don't feel like doing much cooking, I can thaw the bag, throw the filling into some tortillas, add sauce and bake, and boom, dinner is done. I do the same thing with taco meat, filling for spinach enchiladas, spaghetti sauce, etc. Whenever the opportunity presents itself when you ARE cooking, just make some extra and freeze it for another day.

I'm also big on using leftovers to make a different meal. So if I buy a package of chicken breasts, I'll grill all of them at once, then save a couple for dinner later in the week. With the meat already cooked, there are a lot of chicken dishes that go together quickly.

My current favorite quick summer meal is to make tuna or canned salmon salad and stuff it into tomatoes I have scooped out. I stick that on top of a bed of lettuce surrounding either a beet salad or a ham/pea/cheese salad. I buy the pre-cooked beets in the grocery store to keep on hand! I throw a few other veggies on for the kids like sliced cukes and dinner is served. I do make all my salad dressings because I'm allergic to most of the bottled ones. Luckily it doesn't take long to crush a clove of garlic and add salt, oil and vinegar for a basic vinaigrette. I get fancy by adding mustard! LOL

Tonight's dinner is going to be hotdogs on the grill with I don't know what veggies. The kids didn't give me much time in the grocery store this morning before I aborted the trip due to my eldest's behavior!

I love to cook, but I loathe meal planning and deciding what to cook. I felt like I always made the same few things. The cure for me was my Homechef box that comes every week. We get to try new things (that we honestly would never order off of a menu), I don't have to shop for (and then throw away half of) the ingredients, and we have really liked the majority of the meals.

I'm not here to pedal Homechef, I promise. It was just a really good solution for my cooking "rut."

I hear ya! I hate everything about it. from menu planning, to shopping to cooking. and I"m not any good at it. Throw in our crazy schedules where we're rarely all here for dinner (and an extremely picky kid who will only eat noodles with butter or plain rice) I'd rather just stock up on TV dinners and call it a day

I never used to hate to plan, shop, cook.... but then around junior high our oldest DD took over the job and did a fabulous job of it! About that time, DH discovered he liked to grill and the two of them liked working in the kitchen together. Shortly, youngest DD joined the group and when oldest DD moved away for college, youngest and DH kept it up so I haven't really cooked in years and I love it!!

I do occasionally do a big Sunday dinner with the fixin's. I'm also a great dishwasher and kitchen cleaner.

What I've discovered is that while I never really hated to cook, I didn't really love it either.