Does anyone have any different meal ideas, as im completely stuck?!

Does anyone have any different meal ideas, as im completely stuck?

I have 2 boys ages 3 and 6 and also a partner that comes in from work at around 7-7;30pm. My kids will eat more or less anything but my bloke is fussy and wants different things all of the time instead of the same meals week after week. The thing is im stuck for ideas and have got a mental block!! I shop at asda so anything that i can get from there would be great. And its got to be something that doesnt take ages to cook, ive got all day to prepare but limited time to cook as we dont want to be eating our meal late on a night. thanks for any ideas .

Maybe you should tell your fussy husband that if he wants different things *all* the time then he should learn to cook himself, and take some of the burden off you. Nobody can be expected to keep coming up with new things all the time. It usually takes at least three or four goes before you get a recipe right, anyway.

In the meantime, assuming that the useless git isn't going to do that, one of the best things you can do is get some useful cookbooks. The French are very clever at disguising the same old ingredients with different sauces.

Say you cook a chop or a steak. Have the oven on low (like, reheat temperature, about 120C) and when the chop or steak is done almost how you like it (but not quite - very important) whack it into the oven to finish cooking for 5-10 minutes.

While it's finishing cooking, you can make many different sauces with anything left in the pan in which you cooked the chop/steak. (This does mean that you shouldn't cook chops or steaks under the grill, so if you do do that, please don't. It's not really any less healthy, anyway.)

Have an onion or a shallot chopped fine before you've even cooked the chop or steak. Shallots are better because they taste more interesting, but they aren't vital. Add a little oil or butter to the hot pan, turn up the heat and then add the onion/shallot.

Great. You are now making the base for a sauce. You now need a liquid to deglaze the pan. You can use wine (good), stock (good) or water (less good). When the onion/shallot is soft and beginning to turn gold, add a glassful of the liquid.

Turn the heat right up, so that it bubbles fiercely.

What you do now depends on what your meat course is.

If it's a steak, some more stock or red wine will go very nicely.

If it's a lamb chop, white wine is good, as is finely chopped fresh rosemary/garlic.

If it's a pork chop, a generous spoonful of mustard plus some chopped pickled cucumber/dill pickle and a dash of red wine vinegar will make the sauce fit for a king. Add a handful of capers and you're laughing. However, kids tend not to like capers; I did, but then I'm funny that way.

Re stock: if there is a health food shop near you, they might have Marigold stock powder. Get a tub of this stuff. It's brilliant. I have made stock from scratch, using chicken piecs and vegetables etc, and Marigold is as good and as healthy but takes a tiny fraction of the time and expense. Bung some in a pyrex jug, pour boiling water over and bingo, instant stock. Way better than stock cubes.

With all these things, a handful of finely chopped chives or flat-leaf parsley (assuming you can get them in Asda, which I don't think you can) will liven it up no end. All of these things taste brilliant with any kind of potato dish or even steamed green vegetable, or both. Mashed potato is specially good at soaking up a tasty sauce.

None of these things take more than half an hour to actually cook, but the chopping of onion/shallot/caper/cucumber etc will take a bit longer.

Allow me to recommend Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook and Nigel Slater's Appetite as ways into thinking about basic dishes which you can cunningly vary so that your picky husband doesn't notice that he's basically getting the same thing with lots of different accompaniments.

One last one; my mum's old standby was flank steak. Dunno if you can get it in Asda, but probably any cheap cut of steak will do. She marinaded it overnight in olive oil, soy sauce and garlic and cooked it under the grill for about ten minutes. I can still taste it. It was fabulous.