In English, you can sometimes use past tenses to be less direct and more polite.

I wanted to ask you something.

I hoped you'd make lunch.

This isn't the past.

I want to ask you something now, and I still hope you'll make my lunch.

But it's less direct, using a continuous tense consume, less permanent on also less direct.

I'm thinking you should buy the ingredients.

I'm not planning to help you to really distance yourself.

You can do both.

I was hoping you were going to make dessert.

I was expecting you to do the washing up.

I'm being unreasonable, but I'm using past and continuous tenses as distancing to sound polite while I do it.

And now I'm really hungry.