preparing supper for others...

I'm curious as to how those with families that they have to prepare meals for are coping post op. I know in the beginning it may not even be a possiblity to be around the aromas to prepare but once you are a year or so post op what are your meals like?
Do you make one meal and only eat a small portion or certain things from it , or do you prepare a a meal for you and a seperate one for the rest of the fam?

I'm only 4 months post op, but have been fixing meals with  and for my family since about 10days post op. I also still cook for our extended family get togethers and I cook for mine and my sister's family several times a week.  I'm cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my entire family this year.  In the beginning, the overwhelming smells were what actually kept me from trying to eat a lot of different things, because foods smelled and tasted differently. I'm just now to the point where things are starting to smell and taste "normal" again.
The rule in my house has always been, If I take the time to cook it....that's what there is to eat, if you don't like it....then you're SOL.
What has changed is the type of meals I cook. I try a lot of new recipes that I find on here, and on FB (The Hen's Basket, The Healthy Hen, and Skinny Crock Pot sites) and adapt some of our old favorites to be more wls friendly. 
Positive note is that my DH and both teenage boys now also make healthier food choices and have all lost weight too. My 16 year old actually thanked me for having the surgery, because he was about 25lbs overweight...and has lost that weight since I had surgery.
I still occassionally fix one of their favorites, like chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, hot rolls. But I also make sure that I leave one piece of meat to cook for myself, and fix a healthier veggie to go with it.  Even if I don't participate fully in eating the meal, my satisfaction comes when they say "man, that was good....."  ;))
Good Luck to you!!

I only avoided meal time for the first few weeks and after that, I simply ate the protein portion of the meal that I prepared for my family. Once you're on soft solids, purees and even some mushies, it's pretty easy to incorporate your meal plan into what I was preparing for my family.

I did use substitution ingredients to make meals more protein packed. Such as using greek yogurt for sour cream, and reducing certain carbs out of our diets just to make it easier. But, overall, it's not a difficult transition, and I never prepare separate meals for anyone. I just didn't eat the starch/carby option.

 My husband did all the cooking/shopping for the first 10 days. Now I am cooking b/c I love to cook and i try to make things that I can have a bite of - even if I can only mash up a piece of carrot from their dinner.  If i dont eat what they do i still sit at the table and eat my meal - i had some baked ricotta cheese last night while they had chicken pesto pasta and garlic bread! It makes me feel a little more normal to be able to cook and sit at the table with my family.  The hardest part for me was not the smells or the food but being able to stand up that long to cook - I still have no energy.  Do what you feel up to doing and get some help post op if you need to feed a family.

 Definitely agree with making one meal for everyone....and just take the meat portion out for yourself....

The smells are tough in the beginning, when you can't eat anything normal...but now, I am very satisfied with my portion....I get to eat the turkey & gravy or the chicken caccitore or the steak....everyone else may eat the sides, it doesn't bother me....

If it is pizza night or something that I really can't adapt to my way of eating...I do make myself something separate...

my answer is the same as everyone elses, (im only 7 weeks post op) but i found some new recipes that dont incorporate as much carbs, and introduced them to my family but for the most part i just eat the meat/veggie part of whatever i made, i dont make special meals for me or my family, the way i see it, if i dont make this surgury part of my "normal" life and i make it more complicated than it already is than i will have a harder time sticking to it forever. So by making the meals ive always made but eating only part of it, i still feel like im eating the same stuff as my family but i eat healther. Also before my surgury my family ate out alot (i do mean ALOT) but since its a 'waste" to go out to resturants when i will only eat a tiny bit we havent gone out to eat but maybe twice since the sugury (trust me we used to go about 2x a week so..) which means my family is also eating alot healther.

Good this is what I was hoping to hear.. I guess I will let hubby be aware that possibly for the first couple weeks I may be too smell sensitive to prepare food for him and my son, and that he may have to take that on for a bit.

I have cooked from day one of release.  I make healthy meals and always have , the difference is that now I can only eat about 3 oz of food whereas before I would have made food for 6 or 8 and eaten for 3.  Then finished it up the next day or for dessert.  When I was on mushies I would just put it in the magic bullit and add some broth to it and eat that.  The idea for me was to learn to eat within boundries and learn when to push away from the table.  I do that by weighing and measuring when I can and learning what equals what ie a piece of meat the size of or smaller than a deck of cards is a 3oz serving that I am allowed etc.