This might not be a 100% universal experience, but I think it’s pretty dang close. You and your friend, or your spouse, or your kid, need to eat. You ask them what they want. They say, “I dunno.” You suggest something. They aren’t interested. You suggest something else. They’re not interested. Rinse, repeat. Or maybe I got mixed up: maybe you’re the one saying, “meh” to every suggestion.
How do you handle it?
A solution I came up with some time back, and which seems to work, is ping-pong. Whoever asks the question first needs to make a suggestion which they’d be fine with: “What do you think about burgers tonight?” Anyone else in the conversation can veto this suggestion, but must do so by making a novel suggestion that they’d be happy with.
“Nah, I’m not in the mood for burgers. I could go for some Thai food, though.”
The process repeats. “I just had Thai food last night. What about that new vegetarian place?” Note that, now that burgers have been ruled out, they can’t be suggested again: all vetoes are final.
And if you don’t veto something, you 100% forfeit the right to complain about it in even the tiniest way. Once you agree that sushi would be fine, no fussing about sushi!
This works with hangry adults and fussy children alike, because being forced to come up with a new food you’d be okay with makes it increasingly hard to veto any other suggestion.
That said, I’m sure it wouldn’t work for everyone. I’m curious to hear how others handle this situation.
When my son and I are BOTH being indecisive, we have a stand by dish: (Cajun Chicken and Gravy)
The bonus to having this dish as our stand by is that it’s a pain in the ass to make along with messy. So that gives us great incentive to decide on something if we’re feeling lazy.
I’m the “Meh, I dunno” guy, but when I say “Meh, I dunno,” I at least have the courtesy to pretty much go along with whatever someone suggests, unless they’re suggesting eating something exotic like baked pangolin or raw cow intestines.
I usually handle situations like this the same way I handle when everyone wants to go out for dinner somewhere but want to spend more time reading reviews on their phone than eating.
I limit the options. We have enough stuff on hand to make this, that or these. We can have this category of food, or that one. Restaurants nearby with food worth the money (at whatever price range) include that one and these three.
I like the OP ping pong method, but we do our own thing. 5-3-1. Make 5 suggestions. Other person strikes 2. First person strikes the next 2. Solved. It’s tried and true for us and always gets it done.
My #1 criteria is always distance. There is nothing more annoying to me than going 45 minutes by public transit each way just to try some place because it’s different. If it’s mind blowing, sure. But for a burger place or a Mexican, it had better be damn good.
But, yes, I always respond with an alternative. I may not want to go to a place near me on a Saturday at 8 pm if I know they’re gonna be slammed and we’re waiting 45 minutes for a table. But, I‘ll tell you let’s do an early dinner and then grab a couple drinks.
My BFF and I both hate hate hate the “I dunno, whadda YOOOOU wanna do?” hoopty dance and won’t play. If someone tries that on us we’re all “Okay then, Mexican it is, El Cazador is closest!” When it’s the two of us she’s always the one who’s hungry and sets all in motion–then it’s “I’m starving, I’m good with burgers, Mexican or Thai, where we gonna go?” and I pick a place I like and we’re on our way five minutes later. That false consideration bullshit is super annoying and more aggravating than someone being outright pushy about going wherever they want to go.
For meals at home, we made it simple: we have a menu, and we stick to it.
I polled my two teenage boys and asked them to write down a list of 10 or so meals that they would like for dinner on a regular rotation. Then I did the same thing with my wife. I made a list of my 10 things. After discounting the obvious non-starters (no, kids, we aren’t having Kraft Mac and Cheese for dinner) and duplicates I had about 25 meals to work with. Then I made a table in Word and put in each meal, giving thought to what night it was asdigned to and how recently something similar appeared on the menu. For instance tacos and enchiladas are both on the menu, so I made sure they were two weeks apart. Labor and time intensive stuff is reserved for weekends. Add three nights of “call in a pizza”, “fend for yourself,” and “eat leftovers” and voila! 4 weeks of dinners, no uncertainty and no arguing. Then repeat. Exceptions are made, of course, for things like summer BBQ’s and holidays.
I made a shopping list in Word for each week’s menu, which of course will never change because the whole thing repeats every 4 weeks. This makes grocery shopping (and budgeting) easy. I hate grocery shopping so whatever I can do to make the process easier I’m all for. I print out the list, check it against the freezer and the pantry for anything that might be lingering from the last shopping trip, and then take it to the store for hopefully a quick trip.
The whole thing took an afternoon to put together but has made life much easier. Beforehand I had not realized just how much time I had spent planning meals and shopping for groceries. Having everything mapped out ahead of time not only eliminates the “whats for dinner, dad???” questions but also makes it quicker to prep and even cook. I know ahead of time if I need to thaw out some pork chops or soften a stick of butter or whatever.
As far as eating out goes we don’t do that much because 1), money is tight, but more importantly 2), 'rona. In the BC times we had about 5 different restaurants we went to with any regularity and we just sort of cycled through the list, going to whichever one we hadn’t been to in the longest time.
I interpret “I dunno” as “I have no objection to your last proposal and promise to not complain about it.”
It’s remarkable how quickly you can train somebody to either explicitly agree or to counter-propose when you take their indecision at it’s face value; they told me they were indifferent, so I’m going to hold them to their commitment.
Interesting! Mostly I’m talking about eating out (which has become takeout for us, of course). For cooking, we make menus, although not nearly as regularized as yours. Each week, by Wednesday I’ve reserved a pickup time from the grocery store, and by Friday evening we’ve set up a week’s worth of menus and tried to get everything on the list (with occasional screwups, like putting lasagna on the list but forgetting to check the pantry for lasagna noodles).
The menus during the week are pretty inflexible, although we’ll occasionally swap one night for another, or decide we’re both too wiped out to cook whatever was on the list so we’ll raid our stash of frozen dumplings or whatever. As a result, our fridge goes from stuffed tight on Saturday mornings to nearly empty on Friday nights. I’m pretty happy with the routine we’ve found.
My wife and I struggle with this, especially as she often exercises veto power – she won’t have an idea of what she wants for dinner, so much as needing to play a round of 20 Questions to narrow down options based on what she doesn’t want.
Also, this related meme is one of my very favorites:
We tried the menu approach several years ago and allowed for the same flexibility that you note, but the problem basically came down to the fact that once we give into the temptation to stray from it, it suddenly became much easier to do so. So something would get pulled out of the freezer for the next night’s dinner, but the next night we’d be too tired to cook so we’d just get Taco Bell, and night after that something else sounded better than what was on the menu, and on and on… eventually we scrapped it.
So when I redid it a few months ago I paid close attention to what night something fell on and made a point to avoid any potential excuses not to make that meal. For instance, we have a weekly meeting we go to on Thursday nights. I’m home at 5, my wife isn’t home until 6, and we have to leave by 6 or shortly after. So Thursdays are sandwiches, salads, or leftovers – my wife usually eats after we all come home. Wednesdays are usually meatloaf or a casserole, so there’s almost always leftovers. If they don’t get eaten Thursday, then I have it for lunch on Friday.
It’s a bit OCD, but makes dinner soooo much easier. And we’ve certainly had to change things on occasion, usually due the same screw-ups you note: forgetting to get some random ingredient. Especially easy (well, easier) to do with something I usually buy in bulk like taco seasoning and so is easy to overlook when it’s low. So we do keep canned stew and soup in the pantry just for that contingency.
One thing I would love is a pantry app that can be downloaded onto every phone in the family. Update it after every shopping trip and as long as each person who uses the last of something notes it on the app, each family member will know in real-time whether or not there’s still corn dogs in the freezer or cheerios in the cupboard or whatever. I’m sick of my kids asking me if we still have X in the freezer. Dude. Go look. An app would make it easier to grocery shop as well.
Man! I wish Vaderling was that easy. No matter what’s for dinner, or even suggested for dinner, he wants something else, usually something we’re out of because we ate it two nights ago.
I usually ask, get “meh whatever” and never offer the correct two choices.
We essentially never have this problem at home, because we don’t just have a menu plan, we have a different person responsible for dinner every night. So this is the way it works … if it’s your night, then you make something you like. That was how we sold the kids on the idea of cooking in the first place. Yes, someone else might not like it but that’s okay - they get to cook what they like on their night.
Going out … what works for me, because I’m incredibly unpicky, is that I’ll make up to one suggestion to get the ball rolling, but after that I’m not responsible for getting consensus, I just say yes to everything and let other people argue about it if they’re going to argue.
So …
Me: How about pizza?
Annie: Oh, pizza’s so boring. There’s this great place that does Siberian pickled goats kidneys…
Me: Sure
Bea: Oh no! That sounds so … meaty I really think that new raw-vegan-sushi place is where we should go
Me: Yeah, no problems.
Cara: Wow, that sounds expensive. Can’t we just go to KFC?
Me: Fine
…half an hour later when Bea, Cara and Annie are done arguing about the relative merits of FODMAP-friendly, paleo, or sticking to a budget, I’ll get off my phone and go wherever they ultimately decided was good enough
For restaurant meals, we’ve always used done it like this; someone names 3 restaurants, the other person must choose one. If we’re on vacation and every night is a restaurant, we swap back and forth on who serves up the 3 choices.
For dinner at home it’s cook’s choice. If I want to make pulled pork sandwiches and French fries, I make pulled pork sandwiches and French fries. If my gf wants to poach some haddock, she poaches some haddock. Lately we’ve been dividing cooking 50-50, but we’ll go through periods where one or the other of us do all the kitchen work.
