"Bell Jar" > wrote in message
. ..
>
> "Hope" > wrote in message
> news
>> On Fri, 27 May 2005 03:04:15 GMT, "Bell Jar" >
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Hope" > wrote in message
...
>>>>
>>>> is it the cooking or the menu planning that's getting you down?
>>>
>>>Both.
>>>
>>>I am
>>>> ok once I know what we're having, but I hate hate HATE that part. I
>>>> have even subscribed to services where yoiu get a weekly menu sent to
>>>> you to cook (this was ok but lots of "add a can of soup to some other
>>>> processed thing" recipes, and also lots of things I can't get here).
>>>
>>>I did that too ... and thought the same thing. We can get those foods
>>>here
>>>... I just don't want to.
>>>
>>>> Anyway I wondered if it was the cookingor the planning that you're
>>>> hating.
>>>
>>>Right now it's both. I need to get my menu book back out and work on a
>>>summer plan.
>>
>>
>> Well I hope you get on top of it. I am feeling the
>> labours-of-Hercules-ness of the whole cooking/eating/cleaning up cycle
>> at the moment- it's this never ending job that even with an
>> appreciative family is just starting to depress me.
>
> The clean up is part of it too.
> When I go out today I'm going to pick up paper plates and plastic forks.
> Making the clean up simple may help too.
>
>>
>> Most months I buy a food magazine (just everyday food, not necessarily
>> for foodies) that has loads of recipes and even weekly menus. It's
>> all from-scratch which I appreciate (even though a lot of the ads have
>> recipes containing prepared products, some of which have not been too
>> horrible). ANyway sometimes that helps, and sometimes flipping thru
>> back issues helps.
>>
>> I'll be following the suggestions you get with interest because I am a
>> bit "over it" too at the moment.
>>
>> Hope
>>

I know a lot of people can't live this way, but I usually walk away from the
'majority' of my clean-up at the evening meal. For me, evening time is
sacred. I trade off this dirty chore until daylight either in the next
morning when I'm too fogged to know what I'm doing, while making & waiting
for coffee and leave the rest of the cleanup while I'm making breakfast the
next morning/noonish. I guess it's tit-for-tat. I combine this cleanup with
some meaningless talk-show either on radio or TV to pass the time or to just
think about 'things.'

When I bake bread and it's fairly often/routine, because I really like to
make bread, I do clean up bowls as I go, but a lot of flour and cleanup I
just leave until I'm feeling like it and then just in piecemeal-times;
sometimes I have been known to leave a table full of flour for days --
please, no mouse talk!

I used to have a cloud over my head when I walked into the kitchen for so
many years. I don't know what changed my attitude. Be easy on yourself;
cooking for a family is either a curse or a joy.
Dee