Getting Started – My Family's Favourite Food

The aim of my website is to inspire you and your family to get into the kitchen and GET COOKING! Everyone can cook. All you need is an easy non-complicated recipe, which contains ingredients you can get from your local supermarket. If you can produce a tasty meal enjoyed by everyone, you will be encouraged to cook again, and again. My recipes are not only tasty, they are also kind to your wallet, and if you don’t have much experience cooking, they are straightforward and do not require any complicated techniques.

Shopping

Bringing up a family can be an expensive affair. However, as consumers, we have a voice and the ‘Big 5’ supermarkets have to listen. Nothing speaks louder than an increase or fall in profit, especially if they are losing out to a competitor. People are shopping around to do their shopping like never before. The choices we have as consumers are as great as we have ever had. Not only do we have the ‘Big 5’ supermarkets, but the cut priced supermarkets have flourished in recent years.

More and more consumers are doing their weekly shop in more than one supermarket. I myself use both Sainsburys and Lidl. The portion of the market shared by the cut priced supermarkets is growing. A study compared Aldi’s share of the market to Waitrose’s. Aldi had a 0.8% rise for the 12 weeks up to January 2015 compared to the 12 weeks up to January 2014. In comparison, Waitrose only saw a 0.3% rise (source Kantar Worldpanel 2015) for the same period. Being able to shop in more than one place is great, but can be time consuming. Not everyone has a choice of supermarket, or the time or energy if you have children in tow. If you don’t have a choice there are still ways of shopping and cooking wisely that can help your budget.
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Budget

There are a few simple ideas that can help with the cost of your groceries. Most supermarkets have a ‘basic’ or ‘every day’ range, a ‘normal’ range and a ‘premium’ range, or similar. ‘Basic’ range chicken breasts are cheaper than the ‘normal’ range. They are cheaper because the chicken breasts are not of a uniform size, and the pack weight may vary. It is exactly the same chicken that is in the ‘normal’. If the basic pack of chicken you choose is more than you requir, simply wrap the remainder in cling film and put it into the freezer for another day.

Basic range carrots are just all different sizes and shapes. Potatoes and apples are just two more examples. Next time you are buying fruit and veg, pick up what you would normally buy, then see if it cheaper buying in a different volume. So if you buy oranges individually, check to see if it is cheaper to buy them in a bag. However, if you are only needing one orange, then only buy one. Another useful way to make sure your meals are healthy and in budget is to plan ahead. I plan our meals for Monday to Friday, and then do the main shop of the week. If you know what you are cooking, and you know that it is something easy, will stop you being tempted by a ready meal or takeaway.

Buying a whole chicken rather is more cost effective, though I am not big on butchering a whole chicken. However, what I can do is cook a whole chicken. Have roast chicken for dinner, then strip the chicken meat from the bones and put it into the freezer for another day. The bones and skin can also be used to make chicken stock, which can either be used fresh or put in the freezer for another day. Chicken breasts are the most expensive part of the the bird to buy. Look into buying alternative cuts. Thighs are better value, and contain more flavor. They may come with skin and bones, but removing the skin is easy. The bones will come away very easily after cooking.

Buying branded goods rather than a supermarkets own can be cheaper. Have a quick check next time you are shopping to see what the price difference is. Sometimes branded goods are worth buying. Frozen fruit blitzed with natural yoghurt gives a virtually instant desert.

We are always being encouraged to eat our ‘5 a Day’. Frozen fruit and veg are just as good for you as fresh, and are cheaper. They are frozen soon after picking which helps to maintain their goodness.

Supermarkets are vying for our business, many have loyalty cards, or regular money off vouchers. Take advantage of vouchers where you can. However, don’t just buy something because you have a voucher. That way you are spending more money. Supermarket magazines usually have vouchers in them as well as recipe ideas. I have a Sainsburys loyalty card where you accumulate points. I save them up all year then use them at Christmas time when my supermarket shop will be large. It feels great to get an lot of shopping for free or for very little!
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Children in the Kitchen

If you can, try and get your children into the kitchen with you. I know that can be a tricky task. However, if now and again you can get them helping you, they will see how their foods starts out, and its transformation. Eating and enjoying the fruits of their labour, they will hopefully build up an interest in cooking. Another thing I do to keep my boys happy and interested at dinner time, is at the weekend, ask them what they would like for dinner. Once we have got past pizza, pizza, pizza, they can come up with a good suggestion or two. I am not anti pizza by any means, I love it too, but we can’t have it every night! Back To Top

Sugar

In in a world where fast food has never been more readily available, I feel it is vitally important to give our children and families good quality, non-processed food every day. Processed food, both sweet and savory can contain surprising amounts of sugar. However, by cooking from scratch we can instantly reduce the amount of sugar we consume, without sacrificing taste.

Here in the UK, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), advises that we consume no more than 5% of our daily calories from sugar. That’s a maximum of 30g of added sugar a day for children over 11 and adults, which is roughly seven sugar cubes. Children aged 4-6, 19g or 5 sugar cubes and for children aged 7-10, 24g or 6 sugar cubes. Source: gov.uk

In the table below I have given the sugar content -for an adult- of a few of our favourite foods. We would expect there to be high sugar levels in the Coca-Cola and biscuit, but the sugar present in the baked beans and lasagna may suprise a lot of us.

Product	Serving Size	Grams of Sugar
Coca-Cola	300ml	35
Cocopops	30g	11
Heinz Baked Beans	1/2 can	9.8
Sainsbury’s Beef Lasagna	430g	12.1
McVitie’s Milk Choc Biscuit	1 biscuit	4.9

This table highlights how easily it is to go over your daily sugar limit. I am not advocating a ban on sugar, we all just need to take a little time to look at food labels, and make informed choices that reduce our sugar intake. Back To Top

Salt

Salt, like sugar is everywhere these days. Some products have alarming amounts. However, we do require salt in our diet, just not in vast amounts. There are also different types of salt on sale some of which are bettter for us than others. Low sodium salt is better for us than salt with regular levels of sodium. It is the sodium in salt that is bad for us. Excess sodium can lead to high blood pressure, this in turn can put us more at risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

‘On average, adults in the UK eat about 8.1g of salt (3.2g sodium) a day. This may not sound like much, but to reduce the risk of high blood pressure, it is recommended that adults should not be eating more than 6g of salt (2.4g sodium) a day.

Salt intakes should be much lower than this for babies and children. Babies under 12 months old should have less than 1g of salt a day. The daily recommended maximum amount of salt children should eat depends on their age:

1 to 3 years – 2g of salt a day (0.8g sodium)
4 to 6 years – 3g of salt a day (1.2g sodium)
7 to 10 years – 5g of salt a day (2g sodium)
11 years and over – 6g of salt a day (2.4g sodium)’ Source: www.nhs.uk

Product	Serving Size	Grams of Salt
Homepride Spicy Tomato and Pepperoni Sauce	125g	1.22
Heinz Tomato Ketchup	15g	0.3
Richmond Thick Pork Sausage	1 sausage 57g	1.1

What is a Healthy Diet?

Nowadays every time we go on the internet, pick up a magazine or newspaper, there is another new diet or way of eating we should be following. It gets to the point that you don’t know what is good for you. We even now have ‘Superfoods’. These foods are meant to have great health boosting properties. However, when you look at some of them you have to eat daft amounts to get any benefit. Others you only have to eat more normal quantities to get the benefits. I do actually have two foods that I feel are particularly good for me; avocados and coconut. Both of these are full of ‘good’ fats and coconut is very good for keeping your brain healthy. I use coconut milk, oil and creamed coconut regularly, as you will see in my recipes.

I recon there is not a household in the country with children, where vegetables have been sneaked into a meal. My two boys point blank refuse to eat mushrooms. So all I do is cook them, add them to a tomato sauce, and whizz the whole lot up. They tuck with gusto. Even when I have told them that there is mushrooms in the sauce it does not bother them. Another good veg to add to a tomato sauce is red pepper. Just fry it with the onion and then whizz it all up when the sauce is done.

We should all be eating at least 5 portions of fruit and veg everyday. Potatoes don’t count! We should also be reducing the amount of sugar and ‘bad’ salt (salt with high sodium levels) we eat, and including oily fish such as salmon each week. The leaner cuts of meat should be eaten over the fattier ones, though don’t loose the fat altogether as the fat is not only good for flavour but keeps the meat juicy.

The main principles of a healthy diet are to eat:

at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day
no more than 30g sugar per day as an adult
no more than 6g salt (2.4g sodium) per day as an adult
at least one portion of oily fish per week
the leaner cuts of meat
as little processed or pre-prepared food as possible
wholegrains rather than white grains

However, on hoildays, birthdays and family celebrations I do not stick to these rules. Food is there to not only nourish us, but to be enjoyed.

Buy British

Despite not having weather like the Med, the British climate does allow us to grow a lot of fruit and veg. Granted, greenhouses and poly tunnels play their part. Last time I was in Lidl I spent some time looking to see how much of their fruit and veg was grown in the UK (I included The Republic of Ireland as well). I was please to see that over half were grown in the UK. The items that were not grown here, were obvious things we cannot grow here successfully like pineapples, kiwis and oranges. I then had a look at the fresh meat and fish. Chicken, beef, lamb and pork that was sold in it’s original form, ie: not made into nuggets, was 100% British. On their fresh fish packets I couldn’t find a country of origin. I did the same investigation in Sainsburys. Once again the fruit and veg department was stocked with over 50% British produce. Their fresh, chicken, beef and pork was virtually all British. In the fish shelves, all the salmon was Scottish. The white fish came from various sources. Waters around the UK, Denmark and Iceland were just a few. I am an advocate to buy British when possible. Not only does it support our farmers, it reduces food’s air miles.

maximios | March 18, 2016 | Recipes|