Cooking and meal planning tips

• When preparing meals, cook extra portions of chilli, or spaghetti bolognaise and other sauce recipes and freeze. As well as on pasta or spaghetti, they make great baked potato and pizza toppings too, and for those rush days when you are running late, you have a meal all ready to go.
• Double up when cooking main meals, then freeze for a ready to go dinner - i.e. lasagne, cottage pie etc.
• Keep a bag of frozen mixed vegetables to add to rice or any other meals.
• Boil extra pasta or rice for a main meal; it will make a great cold lunch with chopped tomato, veggies, herbs and/or a grilled chicken breast. This freezes really well too. Just freeze in plastic bags and then to defrost run tip the rice/pasta into a colander and run hot water through it.
• Keep pita bread, rolls and breads in the freezer. They defrost really quickly when you need to make lunches. Also pop pita bread in the toaster and it makes a great sandwich pocket or pizza base (spread with tomato sauce and other veggie toppings then sprinkle with a bit of cheese).
• Sauces such as Worcestershire, brown, chilli and soy sauce can add flavour to a bland dish, as well as mixed herbs, chilli, pepper, black pepper, curry powder and spices.  These flavourings can bring to life boring dishes at a very low cost.
• When cooking dinner, put extra in so that you have lunch for the next day from what is left over.

 

Leftovers

 

• Small amounts of lemon juice, milk, coconut milk, tomato paste or pesto, all freeze really well in ice block containers and then into small plastic bags.
• Use leftovers so that they don’t go to waste. Try putting vegetables into pasta dishes or left over bolognaise sauce with some chilli beans added makes a tasty nacho dish.

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