Ready meals/prepared food

queengoth · 3 October 2017 at 9:23AM

I can't answer that because I have a calor gas cooker, it only does does 2 settings, barely warm and inferno, I just move the shelves about to even out the heat lol. 25 to 30 mins sounds about right though.

jackyann · 3 October 2017 at 10:22AM

Thinking of baby steps, I did something yesterday that I haven't done for ages, because plans changed at the last minute.
I got a Pataks spice paste - tikka masala. Not the 'ready sauce', just paste, but it makes a very easy meal: chopped onion, ginger & garlic (if you're not someone who keep ginger & garlic by, you can buy tubes of paste to keep in the fridge), chopped chicken, tin of tomatoes & creme fraiche. Took less than 30 minutes whilst the rice was cooking.

MallyGirl · 3 October 2017 at 11:10AM

I think the Pataks pastes are very good - I use them to make a sort of curried pilaff with chickpeas quite regularly.

maman · 3 October 2017 at 11:41AM

queengoth wrote: »

I can't answer that because I have a calor gas cooker, it only does does 2 settings, barely warm and inferno, I just move the shelves about to even out the heat lol. 25 to 30 mins sounds about right though.

:rotfl:

Thanks anyway. I experimented yesterday with half a dozen frozen chips alongside my freshly prepared ones and they were fine but, as I usually spray with oil, not the same as I'm used to. I'm going to keep experimenting as at the moment I do chips from scratch when I have time and resort to an emergency bag of bought oven chips when I'm pushed for time. Making my own would be far more mse :money: and healthier.:)

patchwork_cat · 3 October 2017 at 5:18PM

Slinky wrote: »

My MIL went down the M&S ready meals route as she was fed up cooking for 1. She's been doing this for a couple of years and recently ended up at the doctors having blood tests and found to have vitamin B12 deficiency and vitamin D deficiency. She now sees that she has to go back to preparing some of her own food again as they are not a full time substitute for proper eating.

The vit d has nothing to do with what she is eating, despite the rubbish about salmon and eggs containing it, in the winter in this country you need to supplement. The vit b12 may also be nothing to do with her diet if she has absorption issues or pernicious anaemia.

firebubble · 3 October 2017 at 6:19PM

The thing with batch cooking is that you basically end up with soups and stews, and after a while, the mushy texture starts to drive me insane if I eat batch cooked stuff constantly. I also only have an icebox compartment, not a freezer, which basically fits two or three portions only.

I also question the nutrition levels of something that has been cooked for hours, frozen for weeks, defrosted, and boiled again...I have no idea whether there are any vitamins at all which can survive that.

My current solution is to use one of the meal kit delivery services - I get three meals for two delivered once a week, in the form of the raw ingredients. I pick my three choices from 6 options. Then I cook the meal for two, and plate up the second portion to be warmed up the next day. That way, I only cook every other day.

I find this brilliant as I can eat a better variety of food (for example, an exotic curry - cooking this myself means spending a fortune on spices, most of which I will probably never use again and will lurk dustily in the back of my cupboard, whereas little teaspoon-sized portions of each is included in the kit), and as I'm actually cooking a properly substantial hot meal, I'm less likely to snack.

I also found that buying ready meals on the way home from work meant that I would also pick up a few 'treats' as I was starving, so I was eating and spending a lot more.

It costs £40 a week, so £6.66 a meal. Some may baulk at this, and if it was more than one person, I think it would work out as expensive, but given that I'm eating better, spending less overall as a proper wholesome meal means snacks aren't required and there's no food waste, this is the best solution I have found for my circumstances.

Yes, I could spend £5, batch cook a chilli, spend another pound on pasta and eat that, and if I've ever been absolutely brassic, I've done it. But TBH, after a few weeks, I find my 'treats' budget slowly creeps up as I get bored, eventually getting to the point where I can't face defrosting another package of mushy slop, so just eat sweets all evening. So there isn't really much of a saving after a while.

jackyann · 4 October 2017 at 9:54AM

As we have said, firebubble, it's what works for you. If it suits you in the life you're leading now, that's fine.
Personally, I found a way around 'eating mush' by planning, and using 'building blocks'.
Here is a recipe that I have been cooking for 50 years and have done loads of variations, as you find a version in any country that grows peppers and tomatoes.I've posted it before, so apologies for repetition - also for saying that when I first cooked it, I had to use expensive tinned peppers. Now it's a useful way of using up soft peppers!

This is for 1- 2:

Gently fry a medium chopped onion in oil, chop a pepper (any colour)add and let soften. Add a can of chopped tomatoes (or chop in the can, using scissors)and boil until there is no liquid.
Now, you can set some aside for another day if you want.
Whisk some eggs, season, turn the heat down, and stir in gently, allowing them to scramble into the mixture.
Eat with plenty of bread, and if you like, some bacon or sausage you cooked whilst preparing,or a piece of left over ham, anything really, or just on its own.

I know this as piperade (southern France) - a soft version of Spanish omelette (also quick to prepare).
You can make dents in the mixture, break eggs in and slide under the grill - if you add chilli to this version, you can call it 'huevos rancheros'. Some sprinkle cheese on top - lovely and crunchy, but to my mind, interferes with the lovely pepper and tomato taste.
Turkey has a version that uses cumin to spice it up.

I always have some 'half baked' bread by me so I can make this dish, although I've also seen a version where you stir the veges into cooked rice, and poach the eggs in that.

Hedgehog99 · 4 October 2017 at 10:27AM

I regularly "cook for one" and do a mix of batch-cooking, quick meals and meals needing a longer prep time. I occasionally have pizza (closest I get to a ready meal).

Some of the batch cooking is a complete meal ready to just heat, other times it's the time-consuming component of something I just have to add the last bit to (e.g. as others have suggested, rice, veg or pasta etc).

Batch-cooking saves on washing-up - get the pans dirty for four portions at once instead of four separate times. Then you only have to wash the freezing container & serving dish.

You get to change the recipe too - add more or less of an ingredient, make it spicier or less spicy etc, or add an extra ingredient (I often add quinoa for extra nutrition and texture).

Fish pie takes a lot of prep, but is worth it for the home-made taste and it freezes well. I can't eat fish any more ( a sudden-onset dietary intolerance), but a couple of hours' prep with the radio on didn't seem a chore and it means you have a home-cooked treat for a work night.

Fresh fish only takes minutes to grill and you can buy individual servings from the fish counter.

These are some of my after-work meals:

Batch cook:
Aubergine & tomato pasta bake - either freeze just the aubergine & tomato mix or as a finished dish.
Tomato-based pasta sauce with veg + meat/veggie alternative

Quick meals:
Baked potato + cheese + beans or whatever preferred topping
Quick tomato & pasta (tinned chopped toms, bit of tom puree + quinoa / veg / fried Quorn etc) - sause prepped in the time it takes to cook pasta.
Used to do a quick tuna & pasta bake - Bechamel sauce with cheese, sweetcorn & tuna added, cooked penne pasta & grated cheese on top.
Halloumi, chips & tinned sweetcorn.

When I have more time:
Risotto - e.g. butternut squash & wild rocket. Stirring is a good way for me to de-stress if I am home for the evening rather than rushing out again.

HTH

PipneyJane · 4 October 2017 at 1:23PM

There's batch cooking and then there's batch cooking...

You don't have to do everything at once, nor do you have to make a big song-and-dance of it when you do. There's two of us and virtually every recipe is for four, so we routinely take today's leftovers to work tomorrow as lunch. Also, we both work long hours, normally with commutes of over 1 hour each way. Until recently, I never got home before 6.30pm (I'm the primary cook). Dinner is usually served by 8pm and almost everything we eat is home made.

Very early on, I realised that phoning for a takeaway or cooking a ready-meal took as long as cooking my own food. I have a few tricks up my sleeve:-

Planning. Even if you don't do full scale menu planning, waiting until you get home from work before you decide what you're having for supper is madness. I usually plan 2-3 days ahead, so that I can defrost what I need.
Cooking double quantities of some recipes and freezing half. Works well for chilli, Bolognese sauce, dhal, etc.
Cook up bases for your favourite meals and freeze those. What do I mean by base? Well, virtually every recipe in this house starts "fry onion with mushrooms, add garlic" so I will chop and fry two huge onions, add 500g of mushrooms and 4 cloves of garlic and fry those until the mushroom water has evaporated. Then I'll portion it into 4, freeze 3 and use the fourth for dinner tonight. (This takes maybe 5 minutes longer than normally prepping a meal.) Having boxes of base in the freezer means that I have cut out the worst and most laborious part of cooking dinner. When you're ready to use, brown your meat as usual then add the base and whatever other ingredients you need.
We had a glut of tomatoes this year, so I also have 10 boxes of "tomato base" in the freezer. (In this case, fry onion with garlic, add chopped tomatoes - I didn't bother peeling - put the lid on tight and simmer until it's a thick mush.)
If you cook dried beans and lentils from scratch, always do triple quantities and freeze 2 portions. I got fed up with buying cans containing hard, barely cooked kidney beans, so now soak and batch cook my own.
One of my friends - a mother of twin boys who worked full time when they were small - used to prepare and/or cook tomorrow's dinner tonight. That way when she got home from work, having collected the twins on the way, she could feed them rapidly and spend time with them rather than cooking dinner. Once the twins were in bed, she'd prepare tomorrow's meal and cook it as far along as possible.
Utilise frozen veg to skip some of the laborious food preparation stages. You may even find it cheaper to buy frozen onions, mushrooms, spinach, etc. You can also chop and freeze your own - I did this with onions at one point, didn't bother blanching them but used them all within a month.

HTH.

- Pip

Slinky · 4 October 2017 at 3:57PM

patchwork_cat wrote: »

The vit d has nothing to do with what she is eating, despite the rubbish about salmon and eggs containing it, in the winter in this country you need to supplement. The vit b12 may also be nothing to do with her diet if she has absorption issues or pernicious anaemia.

The vitamin D is probably due to not getting out in the sunshine much anymore. She's 87. She does eat salmon.

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