21st Century life is lived at a frenetic pace. Establishing a work/life balance is like a juggling act with career, family, home life, training, friends etc. all vying for their piece of the pie. Something has to give, but which of the little balls are you going to let drop? Increasingly and alarmingly the answer seems to be food. I constantly hear from friends and colleagues that they simply don’t have time to prepare meals.
It’s really not surprising that people feel this way, an entire industry has grown up around convincing us that it’s true. You’re too busy to prepare meals, they will tell you, why not let us deliver the food to you, or hand it to you through your car window!
I want to call bullshit on this! Food is the very foundation on which your life is built. Your nutrition fuels every function in your body. I would say to anyone that if you genuinely don’t have thirty minutes to cook and eat a meal, your life is not manageable. I would argue that the act of cooking goes beyond simply producing a meal, it also has a profound effect on your relationship with food. It connects you to what you are eating and invests you in your nutrition in a way that dialling a dinner never can.
Growing up as a child in the 80’s money was too tight to mention. Take away meals were rare and restaurant trips happened once in a blue moon. One thing that was always constant, no matter how tight things were, was the nightly family dinner. Every evening my mother or father would prepare a meal for us and we would sit and eat as a family.
Through the years I have read innumerable cookery books and watched countless hours of celebrity chefs on TV. I still believe that the vast majority of what I know about food and cookery, came from watching my mother as a child. It worries me greatly that the next generation will grow up never having had this opportunity to learn the basics, because our generation didn’t have time to show them.
Even with the best of intentions, creating a habit of preparing meals at home can be difficult. With that in mind, I am going to release a series of easy meal ideas on the blog over the coming weeks. No, the pictures won’t impress your friends on Instagram, but I do promise to make them simple, affordable and accessible. Each week I will publish a new meal idea together with the nutritional information and the cost per portion. I am confident that I can provide you will plenty of ideas which will be quicker and cheaper than ordering a take away.
Bon Appetit! 
