Hello everyone! My wife and I have been married for 20 years and have a 7yr old and 9yr old. We are also both working professionals in healthcare, which means 12 hour shifts often leaving us getting home at 7:45-8pm. Due to this we have resorted to eating out a lot.

Next issue is that both my wife and I have childhood trauma and have not had any role models growing up of what it takes to make a household function. Growing up my mom always cooked dinner so that’s my natural inclination or expectation (I understand it’s not right but it’s a habit/ instinct.)

So basically we both hate cooking, neither have had help or examples of feeding a family, and we need help.

We are quite capable of making meals and following a recipe, what we are looking for is how do we develop that foundation, the habit, of cooking meals without having to follow a recipe every time?

Is there like a book or something? Lol. I know my mom always had things she could make from memory to rotate through but we don’t have that even.

EDIT ——-Thank you everyone for the helpful responses. It’s not that we can’t cook, we just don’t want to. Always seems there is something more pressing at the time.

However, tonight 3/26 I cooked dinner for the family. Bought a frozen orange chicken and vegetable fried rice. Cooked both packages, mixed together and voila dinner in 10 min!

BTW I forgot to mention I had bariatric surgery gastric sleeve back in November so my meals are literally 1/2 to 3/4 a cup total and that’s it.