Reduce stress of shopping, chopping
Two of my food icons are as follows: Nigella Lawson (right), who taught me how to be a domestic goddess, and Mrs Beeton, who ingrained household discipline into me.
The wisdom of both genres has now merged, with proper meal planning, grocery shopping and general household management becoming fashionable. Factors like food waste, limited household budgets and the quest for healthy meals all influence this growing trend.
A survey by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed the average Irish household throws away €800 to €1,000 worth of food a year. Bear in mind this survey was done in 2010, during a time where people had been forced to make an effort to reduce food waste.
If you want to improve your diet and reduce waste you must learn to cook a large proportion of meals from scratch. Processed and convenience foods are ridiculously high in sugar, salt, trans fats and nasty additives. Even foods that seem fairly innocuous can be very poor nutritionally. One well-known brand of sweet and sour sauce has four tablespoons of sugar in one recipe serving!
By planning your meals effectively you will see an average saving of 30pc. And with proper planning, you will eat better than you did before and still save money.
Having a system in place also reduces the stress of shopping, chopping and cooking. Who knows, getting the dinner on might even become a pleasure!
The first step is to sit down and collate your favourite recipes. Then you start factoring in things like nutritional balance, variety and seasonality into the equation. From that you can derive two or three weeks of menus that you can rotate.
Based on your menu plan, draw up shopping lists of fresh, frozen and store cupboard ingredients. This will take a good few hours. Sound like a lot of trouble? Yes. Worthwhile doing? Yes. Easier way to do it? Thank goodness, yes!
I had the pleasure of meeting Sian Breslin, the woman behind siansplan.com, an innovative new website designed to help people plan meals, grocery shop effectively and enjoy healthier recipes. Sian is based in Donegal, where she runs a successful cookery school and guesthouse. When you meet her, the first thing that comes across is her warmth and desire to help families.
I totally support the concept of menu planning and organisation, so I end up looking at loads of websites. What I find is many of them are American and use ingredients that are not available to us in Ireland.
I also question the nutritional value of many of the recipes. I'm in favour of a lovely weekly dessert and home baking, but you can't eat like that all the time.
Finally, my other big problem is that the plans are very rigid and don't allow for the days you may eat out, or just don't feel like cooking.
This is where Sian's plan is ingenious. The meal planning is colour coded, so really easy to use. The idea is for the seven dinners in the week, you choose four red days, one green day and two amber days. The red days represent meals you will cook from scratch.
There is a vast array of recipes to choose from that are tasty but nutritionally balanced, too. The website will also do up your shopping list, so no pen and paper needed.
Your green day is when you cook using leftovers. And we're not talking spaghetti bolognese sauce three ways. Leftovers are used in clever ways, such as a vibrant stir-fry, roasted vegetables, tray bakes, soups and many more ideas.
The remaining two days are amber days. These are where you may get a take-away or have very simple meals.
There is a free 30-day trial available for anyone who wants to try the plan. And if you decide to subscribe, the most advanced option costs only €9.99 per month.
A worthwhile investment considering how much you can save in grocery bills and food preparation time.
www.siansplan.com www.rozannestevens.com
Originally published in
