Retirement + who makes lunch?

[disykat]

My DH has been semi retired since Feb 2021. After working 55+ hours a week for most of our lives, he now works 2 8 hour days a week. I worked 2 12 hour hour shifts a week & retired this April. I had been busy with work & helping care for my mom since late 2019. I would spend 12 hour days or evenings with her twice a week. She passed away at the end of May. I feel we just started our retirement in June. With my DH still working part time & me still helping clean out our mom’s house we just make plans day to day.

Like many of us in this age group, I was on a similar roller coaster for the last five years, which is why I had retired early and only do per diem work. Now that my mom is our only parent left and we've got her moved a few minutes down the road life is already so much easier! (Her house 400+ miles away is finally clean and just went into escrow a few days ago!!!) DH and I were just talking about how we might need a little a "time to re mourn" our parents now that the whirlwind is finally truly subsiding. We each lost a parent last summer, while hospitals were really hot in their area with the Delta variant. After some pretty intense caregiving that involved me living between two states, it's another "job we're retiring from."

 

[focusondisney]

Like many of us in this age group, I was on a similar roller coaster for the last five years, which is why I had retired early and only do per diem work. Now that my mom is our only parent left and we've got her moved a few minutes down the road life is already so much easier! (Her house 400+ miles away is finally clean and just went into escrow a few days ago!!!) DH and I were just talking about how we might need a little a "time to re mourn" our parents now that the whirlwind is finally truly subsiding. We each lost a parent last summer, while hospitals were really hot in their area with the Delta variant. After some pretty intense caregiving that involved me living between two states, it's another "job we're retiring from."

You probably do need time to decompress & catch your breath. I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been thru.

 

[georgina]

Thought about starting a separate thread, but since we're all here....
When you talk about making meals, how many are actually getting raw ingredients, prepping and cooking food vs. warming stuff up? Because warming something out of a can, jar, box, or leftovers and actually cooking dishes
are very different activities.

I can understand how concocting actual meals three times a day would be a huge responsibility and how someone could be "over it" after years of doing it. OTOH, throwing a piece of chicken and a potato in the air fryer and setting the timer isn't much of an issue.

So are some of you actually prepping full meals one or more times per day? We almost never do that, and on occasions like holidays, DD usually cooks for us. Just curious!

Breakfast is usually Cheerios, a banana, yogurt, or eggs. DH makes his own eggs when he has them. If I have oatmeal I make it. Lunch is fruit, maybe a sandwich, or reheated leftovers. So only cooking for dinner, no air fryer here. Dinners are usually simple low calorie affairs like grilled chicken or fish, a vegetable, and salad. Pasta and vegetables, or rice and beans, sometimes soup (Costco) or homemade stew or chili.

 

[tzolkin]

Whoever made dinner the night before has already made lunch the next day in my world.

That's what I was thinking

When you talk about making meals, how many are actually getting raw ingredients, prepping and cooking food vs. warming stuff up? ...

So are some of you actually prepping full meals one or more times per day?

Nearly all our food is made "from scratch", but I definitely don't actively cook at each meal. I will often make extra while I'm cooking and then have it in the fridge or freezer that can be reheated. I have done this since our kids were little so they would have breakfast before school without me having to cook in the morning. We would have our freezer or fridge stocked with pumpkin pancakes, muffins, quiche, oats, etc that just needed to be heated up. Now I have less of that frozen, but I will still batch prep things like beans, rice, kale for the week so it only takes maybe 5 minutes to cook lunch and there are various combinations/uses so we can choose to eat two different meals using the same ingredients.

 

[lovesmurfs]

My DH has no clue about cooking & I’d rather he doesn’t start now, lol.

We don’t walk together tho. He has much longer legs & walks faster than me. I have had plantar fasciitis several times & can’t walk as far as he does without causing foot pain/ strain that takes days to resolve. So we go on our walks separately.

My father-in-law didn't start cooking until his 60s and DMIL had gone back to teaching. He was so funny about it -- kept saying that "if he knew how easy it was, he'd have started sooner," resulting in many, many eyerolls.

My DH will cook -- but we have an agreement that whoever cooks doesn't clean up. His ability to clean while he's cooking is non-existent, so I prefer to cook and let him clean up.

And same with DH and me -- we each walk every day, but separately. He's so regimented (military guy) and goes exactly 3 miles in exactly an hour outside. I'll go longer and use the rec center's indoor walking track (because heat...and air conditioning). Sometimes 3 miles, but usually 4.

 

[leebee]

Thought about starting a separate thread, but since we're all here....
When you talk about making meals, how many are actually getting raw ingredients, prepping and cooking food vs. warming stuff up? Because warming something out of a can, jar, box, or leftovers and actually cooking dishes
are very different activities.

I can understand how concocting actual meals three times a day would be a huge responsibility and how someone could be "over it" after years of doing it. OTOH, throwing a piece of chicken and a potato in the air fryer and setting the timer isn't much of an issue.

So are some of you actually prepping full meals one or more times per day? We almost never do that, and on occasions like holidays, DD usually cooks for us. Just curious!

It's more than that, though. There is the whole mental piece... what's in the freezer, do I need to go to the store, is there time to thaw something, how am I going to make this (asian? Italian? etc), what goes along with, when do I start cooking, etc. Sometimes the mental effort is the hard part!

We aren't retired yet (I could retire in November but the mortgage and HELOC have other plans) and I'm not sure DH will EVER fully retire, but I don't expect that things will change much, either. Since we've lived together (36 years? 37?) DH has had basically the same thing for breakfast: Cereal with milk, and OJ. Sometimes he'll toast up an English muffin, or go wild and make a bagel with cream cheese! He fixes this himself; except for coffee, I don't really do breakfast. For lunch- even on the weekends- he has yogurt, fruit, and nuts, so he packs this for himself, too. At home sometimes he'll swap it up and have ramen noodle soup.

Dinner... I cook dinner. Our usual pattern is for me to do 2 meal preps on Sundays, and then we can reheat during the week. I love this in the fall and winter... casseroles, soups or stews, roast chicken dinner, sheet pan dinners. In the warmer months dinner is often protein on the grill and a salad, so we cook more in the spring and summer. Even though weeknights are more like grazing, I still do the "cooking." I'm the reheater/recombiner/redesigner of whatever is left from the weekend. Not a ton of kitchen time, but still I'm "cooking" for 30mins-an hour. No worries, though, as DH cleans the kitchen most nights. We usually carpool, so when I cook he has a chance to relax and regroup. After dinner, he'll clean the kitchen and then has his second wind, so he can finish grading, lecture preps, etc. for the next day. It works, and I don't really see it changing much, even in retirement.
(and yes, we do take-out or go out once or twice a week- nothing fancy, usually the local tap room for BBQ or nachos, or get pizza)

 

[disykat]

Yes, the planning is the hardest part. Having all the right groceries, not wasting food, etc. I'm hoping that part is a lot easy with less "stuff" crowding our brains and more time on our hands!

 

[mrodgers]

That's what I was thinking


Nearly all our food is made "from scratch", but I definitely don't actively cook at each meal. I will often make extra while I'm cooking and then have it in the fridge or freezer that can be reheated. I have done this since our kids were little so they would have breakfast before school without me having to cook in the morning. We would have our freezer or fridge stocked with pumpkin pancakes, muffins, quiche, oats, etc that just needed to be heated up. Now I have less of that frozen, but I will still batch prep things like beans, rice, kale for the week so it only takes maybe 5 minutes to cook lunch and there are various combinations/uses so we can choose to eat two different meals using the same ingredients.

I always took leftovers the next day to work. We would typically have 1 or 2 small servings leftover from dinner.

Now that I'm by myself, I cook a ton when I do cook. When pork chops are on sale, I buy several packages, then cook them all on the grill to throw in the freezer. I typically cook on the weekends, like the pork chops, about 20 of them along with asparagus or potatoes or whatever else. Then during the week I eat "dinner" for lunch so I eat a full meal in my office reheated then just eat a salad for dinner. Or I go for a bicycle ride and eat a PB&J for dinner out at the lake only 8 miles away. I call it my dining room, LOL. I rarely eat a meal at dinner time after work any more. I just switched the food amounts one eats for lunch and dinner. I eat dinner for lunch and lunch for dinner.