I used to be a great cook - confident to just throw together different things knowing that the flavours I was choosing would work well. I never got flustered cooking and it was always a stress release for me to get into the kitchen. Then came children. My fussy "I DON'T LIKE THAT WHY DID YOU MAKE IT?" children. Because they are both too far on the lightweight side I couldn't always adopt a "well that's all there is so eat it or go hungry" approach, and because DD2 will literally throw up if I push her to eat something she doesn't like my cooking has changed to cater to their requirements. This means plain pasta, sausages, frozen peas that aren't even heated. Serious gourmet stuff there!!

So, after years of this I've lost that ability to just look at what's in my cupboard and go oh yeah, there's dinner. I've also lost the motivation to cook given that the girls are still hopeless and my DH, while appreciative of lots that I cook, is definitely more in favour of the plainer sorts of foods - takes the enjoyment out of it when I know that if I cook something a bit different, heaven forbid that has a sauce, the procedure will be serve to children, nag them (or not) to eat it, scrape entire contents into bin.

Has anyone else been here? Did you manage to get back to enjoying it again? Our diet is shocking now so I really need to start changing things, but I'm struggling to get it underway.