I cook 2-3 times a week, rest of the time we have left-overs and we get takeout 1x week. I know moms who cook more often than this but I find this exhausting, to be honest. Coming up with ideas for what to make, spending time doing it (which often means 11pm)... but I also like to cook and love knowing that my family eats great home-made meals. Am I just a perfection-crazy mom?

How often do you cook? Do you like it?

I absolutely love to cook, but I'm with you -- it is exhausting to plan those meals and finding the time to do it is really rough some weeks. I try to do alot of cooking on the weekends and make enough for some GOOD leftovers during the week. With that I usually cook 2-3 meals during the week.

I'd love any tips anyone may have to make it easier to cook during the week!

Oh, good, not just me. Thing is, like you said, I love to cook -- just not ALL. THE. TIME.

I've been using the slow cooker a bunch and it helps -- I got the William Sonoma recipe book for slow cookers and have made some great stuff that lasts. Also, Chris at Ordering Disorder blog here -- have you checked it out? -- has some great crock pot recipes.

But I still dread it.

I cook at least 4 times per week - sometimes all 7 days! My meals aren't gourmet or always even healthy. And I don't usually enjoy cooking. We just can't afford to eat out and I usually bring leftovers for lunch. The nights I don't cook, my husband cooks. I wish he would cook more often since he's home all day. But instead most nights I get home by 5:45, cook dinner (usually 30-45 minutes) and then eat. We're still done by 6:30 most nights.

As I said, most my meals aren't exactly "healthy". At least once a week we have Hamburger Helper. Tonight we're having chicken tenders and a pasta side. My least favorite thing about cooking every night is the fact that there are ALWAYS dishes to be washed.

Probably 1, on average. My husband will cook another 1-2 times, too. We'll eat out at least 1 time, probably 2. Then there is frozen pizza night. I'm also a huge fan of FFY - fend for yourself night. This is when you can choose spaghettio's, chicken nuggets, cereal, leftovers, waffles, ramen noodles. . . whatever delicious fare is available!

Jenni - healthy or not, I'm also a Hamburger Helper mom! Lately it's been more Tuna helper, since you don't even have to cook the meat. . .

It all depends on the week! I love to cook, but it too exhausts me.

My husband is dieting now, which takes off the burden "to cook" . . .

Typically, I cook all of our evening meals - about half of them are 'cheat-meals' meaning a packaged portion that I add meat to, or what have you.

I do enjoy doing frozen dinners myself at home once a month or so and then I end up with 20-30 frozen meals that are home-cooked . . . I'd be happy to email any of you the recipes if you want them!!

I cook every day. EVERY day. And I'm not fond of it. This week I'm experimenting with the cooking...I made every meal for the week, either fully cooked or assembled, and it went into the fridge or freezer. So far I'm loving it and we're only 3 days in. And it really only took a 5 minute brain storm w/ hubby to see what he wanted to eat this week and a couple of hours in the kitched. That sooo beat an hour every night of cooking and cleaning!

I cook at least 4 or 5 days out of the week. Most of the time I cook all 7 days. I love to cook. My family is so use to it that they get disappointed when I don't

I envy all of you.

I wish I could/would more often. On average I cook just once a week. I hope to change that as my 10 month gets older... but I'm not confident it will.

I just find the planning, shopping, cooking and cleaning up exhausting. Especially since the actual eating is hurried with a 10 month old nearby. So, what's the point of creating a great mean (not that I even can), to have to gobble it down?

Any tips for making the whole process easier? I feel hopeless.

All 7 days of the week! I will be glad when I go back to work so we can eat out once in a while!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOL! For me, the question needs to be "How many times per YEAR do you cook?" The answer is two or three. Pathetic, I know!

Hi All, I cook at least 4 times a week. I must admit most of the time I prefer my own cooking. I like to plan at least three days dinner in advance so that I know what groceries to purchase. I dont like left overs so I get just enough. I like to go out but I dont like to pay if the food is not good, I hate it if the food is cold or under cooked, even if the resturant manager offers to replace it my husband has finished his meal befor I get mine back. That defeats the object. We do however have a couple of favorite places that we go to dine.

For those of you who find the whole thing a chore, Find dishes that are easy, Tasty and dont take hours to cook. Purchase the ingredients for two or three days in advance.
When baby is asleep prepare veggies, marinate your met chicken or fish. If a salad prepare, cover and put in refrigerator. This makes the process less stresfull.

I am one of the lucky ones, We are perminantly on the South Beach Diet, so my husband cooks 7 days a week. He usually grills our meats and throws a bag of Steamfresh veggies into the microwave. I do however, clean up the dishes afterwards.

I cook 7 days a week as wel! :) I try to use the crockpot for some stuff which makes it easy.. throw in all the ingredients, no pots or pans to wash! Sunday is always pasta for the kids and some parmagiana or italian meal... I even make breakfast and serve a picky crowd so different meals are served!

For a long time I would do a 'bulk cook' at the weekend and freeze meals, then it was a case of making some pasta or rice and/or doing some veg - loved that. It was so easy. Just lately I've been less organised so I 'cook' something from the ingredients in our fridge and pantry every night. However I have to admit...some nights it's just an omelette.

Since I quit my job last year and started my own Home Business, I'm cooking 4-5 times a week a maybe 2-3 times I cook breakfast.
My husband and daughter both work 3rd shift and I'm always up so.......why not?

Carol K
URL

We eat out 2-3 times a month. The rest of the time I cook. And by cooking I mean that the food is coming out of my kitchen. Sometimes it's frozen pizza or taquitoes, or a salad, but I'm still doing the planning and the shopping and putting it together with sides and serving it up so it counts as cooking.

Sometimes I love it. Other times not so much. When I love it, I try and stock up the freezer for the times I'd rather be doing something else. And some of the things I cook are what I call a "full cook," meaning a meal that takes time and effort. And other times I make scrambled eggs.

I cook five nights a week, plan the meals on Sunday, shop on Monday, never divert from the set menu otherwise it's complete chaos and no one eats at all.

I love to cook. But, dinner is very stressful lately with big work projects leaving me begging for time and a lack of energy making late nights impossible times to work.

I dream of the day when everything shows up on the stove ready to eat

Well, I cook none, because my husband does all the cooking. He cooks every day!

Greetings! Cooking is one thing I love to do, but it's hard to find the time during the week. I do the majority of my cooking on Sunday, and then again on Wednesday. I do not cook on Fridays, and my kids are ok with that!

If any of you have crockpot recipes you'd like to share I'd really appreciate it! I have a crockpot but haven't used it yet. Healthy homecooked meals that don't take too much time sound good to me!

I just started cooking 6-7 times a week. I use the crock pot about twice a week (love the recent recipes in Ordering Disorder - keep them coming). One thing that has helped me has been to make a weekly menu before I go shopping. I used to just show up at the grocery store and wander the aisles trying to figure out what to make.
One thing I'm wondering about, is the whole leftover and freezing meals process. I'm very paranoid about the shelf life of leftovers. Anyone have any good tips on how long things are good for or how to make and freeze ahead of time?

Can't say I love to cook but I do it about 2-3 times a week. We both work full time and have small children (7,2) who don't always eat the same things we do so there are always a variety of things being made on the fly at our house.

i generally cook maybe once during the week and definitly on the weekends! If i can make it home early enough to cook i try to - otherwise hubby and DS fend for themselves. incentive enogh to get home early!! we also eat out way more than we should... just far too easy around here (and NO DISHES! oh how i hate dishes)

We probably cook about 4-5 nights a week? Then get take out or go out to eat on the weekends. I do like to cook, but have been leaving it more to my husband lately since I usually have a 1 year old attached to my leg beggin for attention, which makes it difficult to do the prep work (especially with raw meat).

I do like the idea of the slow cooker meals but my husband doesn't want to leave something like that on while we're not home or asleep, so I have to be home for 4-8 hours if I want to do anything in the crock pot. And at that rate it is usually quicker to just cook a non crock pot meal that only takes an hour.

Anyone have suggestions for things to cook on the weekend to freeze for quick dinners during the week?

I'd say I cook 4 to 5 times a week, often creating leftovers that get miraculously transformed into something else later in the week...

Believe it or not, I still haven't gotten a crock pot!

I made curries to freeze (just freeze the extra sauce, and use it to simmer meat and veggies another time), pulled pork, pot roasts, roast chicken (use the bones to make stock, use the stock to make rice) and keep easy-to-cook things like pasta and homemade sauce and italian sausages and thinly sliced pork chops on hand to whip up a meal in 20 minutes or so...

Oh, how I love my food co-op! We call it Food Fairy (because food magically appears on the dinner table). How it works: there are three families, we each cook one day a week for everyone. The only rules -- no casseroles and no crustaceans (because my husband is allergic). I cook Mondays, one person cooks Tuesdays, and one Thursdays. We have 2, 3 and 4 kids, all about the same ages. I cook on my short or off day from work, and always have dinner on my long day. For one of the other women, it's the opposite -- she's a doctor, so she never cooks on her surgery day.

If you can find a group of like-minded families, I HIGHLY recommend this! BUT, they must be people who not only eat, but parent like you. We all have a "your choices for dinner are take it or leave it" rule for our kids -- no picky eaters allowed!

That leaves one night for leftovers, one night for pizza, and one or two nights to do something quick an easy.

We have twins--19 month old girls. I used to cook these really elaborate meals before we had kids. Then I cooked regularly because I was home with the girls. When I went back to work, I stopped cooking entirely--my hour commute each way has much to do with that, plus the colicky stage... oh it was awful.

My husband and I have mostly opposite schedules, and while the girls were not eating solids, a bowl of cereal for me was about all I could handle. I lost a ton of weight that way! LOL

Now he cooks about once/week, and I cook only one night on the weekends. But again, my husband isn't home most nights, including weekend nights, so if anything, I'm all about the crockpot at the moment.

I'm hoping it gets better as the girls get more independent and I can get back to enjoying making nice meals. I really enjoy cooking, and it has been one of the things I've had to lower expectations on.

I love to cook, I just dont take/make the time to have the ingredients available. My daughter has been making most of our dinners lately. SHe is so close to being completed in her associates degree as a Pastry chef, she can hardly stand it.
She makes The best classic meals, Meatloaf, casseroles, Pastas I believe are her favorites

I plan my meals for 2 weeks. I don't always eat what is on the menu for that night. I might rearrange a little, but either way, there is always a plan for dinner. I've always thought that that is the hardest part of cooking - figuring out what is for dinner! I don't love cooking, but I do love to eat and NOTHING stands in the way of me getting something good for dinner by 5:30 at night! Of course, I like the idea that my family is eating well, too

I menu plan every sunday night - it's the best concentration I have or get all week - KNowing that I'm saving money by shopping smartly the ads PLUS coupons gives me real joy - Awesome time I have - RULE: MONDAYS are always sunday leftovers - just happens! Fridays: smodge/podge of serious carbs - no veggies. ha ha ha
Farmers market trip on Sat. mornings with the kids is awesome and amazing -
Cheaper than grocery store produce -

COOKING is my fave and I just love it when I get the feedback from my kids and hubby:
"This is SOOOOOOOOOO good!"