alt Hacker News> We both have full time jobs and can only cook “real meal” in the weekend now that WFH ended.
Do you have extra long hours and/or an extreme long (1 hour) commute?
It’s common in my social circles for parents to work 8-5 or 9-6 and still cook weekday meals that are healthy. With some meal and grocery planning it’s not that hard, unless you of course have on of those 90+ minute commutes and a job that keeps you in office until 8PM.
Unless your definition of “real meal” is something more than I’m thinking of, like something that requires hours of prep.
> It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least somewhat health conscious…
There are a lot of healthy meal planning (ahead of time prep) or quick and easy recipes out there. It’s pretty easy to prepare a healthy meal with steamed vegetables and a warmed protein in 10 minutes. We can even make an entire healthy meal in 30 minutes start to finish after doing it for years.
More traditional “French” cuisine is not typically ready in 10-30 minutes when starting from scratch (or I’m just incredibly slow).
Cooking a full meal would at least take me an hour end-to-end. As a sibling comment mentioned, it’s more that when I finally get home (6:30 -7pm), I rarely have the energy to put in that kind of time.
So I end up making a quick pasta or other such dish that is ready in 30 minutes.