WHERE DID WE GO WRONG?

Have you ever spent a small fortune in the supermarket and still struggled to put a decent meal together? Are your children always complaining they’re hungry even though they eat constantly? Do you own a set of expensive saucepans or have a kitchen full of gadgets you never use? Would you like to cook more and eat together as a family if only you had the time?

Time, or lack of it, is probably the reason most people give for not cooking, but less than 40 years ago practically everyone cooked at least one proper meal from scratch every day, even though very few people owned a fridge, let alone all the other labour-saving devices we take for granted today. Maybe we do have more commitments in some areas of our lives than previous generations, but when it comes to food, not only do we have a much greater variety to choose from, we also have 24-hour supermarkets, internet shopping, home deliveries, endless cookery programmes on TV, recipe books galore and microwave ovens that sell for smaller sums of money than you’d spend on a family meal in a fast food outlet.

To hear some people talk you’d think no one had ever been busy until about 1985, but no matter where you live or what your circumstances are, the truth is you can put a balanced meal together in less time that it takes to dial up a pizza and wait for it to be delivered (cold, usually) to your door. Nobody should have to rely on takeaways and ready meals, let alone feed them to their children, on a regular basis.

If recent reports are to be believed, there must be more cookery books gathering dust in designer kitchens in this country than there are people who actually cook anything. But having said that, it’s simply not true that hardly anybody cooks from scratch either; lots of people combine a career with parenthood and still manage to produce decent food every day.

So apart from the old argument about having no time, what, exactly, is putting people off? Are they really too busy and important to roll their sleeves up and make a simple meal – or are they just lazy? Perhaps they don’t care about the food they eat or they don’t know where to start. Can there be anyone who doesn’t realise how much better proper home-cooked food tastes than the mass-produced, cook-chill alternative? And that by preparing your food at home, your worst nightmares about what might have got into it by mistake – never mind what some people deliberately do to the food in factories for their own amusement – don’t come into it? (Everyone’s heard stories, and you must wonder sometimes, even if you’ve never had a bad experience yourself.)

Some of the blame must surely go to the manufacturers of convenience foods for making us believe that what they produce – so beautifully packaged and presented and cleverly advertised – is good food, and that by eating it we’re making our lives easier. I bet there are hundreds of thousands of people who don’t realise they could make far better shepherd’s pie or lasagne themselves, just by following a very simple recipe – and why would they? So seductive are some of the TV commercials, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a privilege to be allowed inside the store to spend your money in the first place.

But make no mistake, no one’s doing you any favours, least of all the major stores with their gorgeous displays, catchy slogans and phoney ‘two for the price of one’ deals. Not long ago I tried a ‘cod goujon’ from one of our biggest and best-loved stores at a friend’s house. Biting into it I was horrified to discover it wasn’t even a proper fish fillet, but a mishmash of whatever goes into the cheapest, low grade fish fingers. The only difference being that this ‘goujon’ wasn’t shaped like a regular fish finger, presumably to give the impression that it was a superior product. Maybe the manufacturer wasn’t committing any breach of the law (because the ingredients would have been hidden away in tiny writing on the packaging) but people in a hurry tend to grab whatever looks good and place their trust in the brand name, without stopping to study the small print, or even really knowing what they’re looking for.

This isn’t just food, this is inferior food; cynically produced and sold to a gullible public by unscrupulous businessmen. All they have to do is apply the current buzz words to everything, then sit back and wait for us to fall for it. I’m thinking of the ‘organic’ mash I came across in the same store recently, which costs more than a 10 lb sack of potatoes from a greengrocer. So what if it was ‘organic’? I’d rather cook a few potatoes myself than spend £2 on one portion of mashed potatoes, which, looking at the label, is actually 82 per cent potato and 10 per cent fat. And, on the evidence of a friend who’s actually eaten the organic mash, ‘it doesn’t really taste right’, so no surprises there.

The funny thing about convenience food – at least it would be funny, if we weren’t the fattest nation in Europe and getting bigger all the time – is it’s not even that convenient. Once you’ve removed the packaging, read the instructions, pierced the film lid (or not), waited, taken the tray out halfway through the cooking time to stir the food, waited again, let it stand for two minutes, scalded yourself on the steam, searched in vain for a piece of meat amongst the gunk, wolfed the lot in four minutes flat and wondered what else there is to eat because you’re still hungry, it might occur to you that the little bit of effort you saved by not cooking your own dinner wasn’t really justified by the end result. And the same can be said about so-called fast food, as anyone who has ever been served a burger at the counter in a fast food restaurant, then waited at the table (dirty, usually) for the fries to be brought over ten minutes later, will know.

The other food myth that often gets repeated is that the unhealthiest foods are necessarily the least expensive, and that some people, especially families on very low incomes, only resort to eating them because they have no choice. But this is nonsense. A week’s worth of good quality meat and fish with lots of potatoes, rice, pasta, vegetables, fruit and other whole foods costs no more than the same amount of cheap chicken, burgers, pies, reconstituted potatoes, instant microwave meals and fizzy drinks.

I know cooking isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, and some people through no fault of their own are never going to enjoy it, which is why this book isn’t about learning to cook complicated meals that take hours to prepare and only minutes for your kids to reject. You don’t have to like cooking; you don’t have to be a great cook, or even a particularly good one. You don’t have to go shopping more often than you want to, or spend more money than you can afford. There’s nothing here that you can’t buy from any of the big supermarkets – assuming that’s where you do your shopping because, like me, you’re not lucky enough to have anything better where you live – and no expensive ingredients with unfamiliar names. Some of the recipes can be thrown together in minutes and a few don’t involve any cooking at all. They all contain a certain amount of fat, sugar and salt, but nowhere near as much as you’d find in commercially prepared food – and at least the nutrients are there as well.

There seems to be a list of so-called super foods for everything and everybody these days; pregnancy, the menopause... I even came across a series of articles in one parenting magazine under what I thought was the very bad taste headline: ‘Cancer-proof Your Kids’. One minute I’m reading about how I should be eating more purple food; the next week it’s green, then orange and yellow. There’s The Bikini Diet, The Sunset Beach Diet, The GMI Diet, The F-Plan Diet, low-fat-high-carb diets, high-fat-low-carb diets, and everything in between. Are we meant to be eating more, or less dairy right now? Is wheat an excellent source of fibre and slow-release carbohydrates, good for sustaining our energy levels – or a totally unnecessary food that many people have some kind of intolerance to? What should we be eating to be sure we’re getting enough zinc? Is it a magnesium or potassium deficiency that causes sugar cravings? Sometimes, when you only want to know what is good for you, rather than why, it’s too much information.

And yet, despite all this food knowledge, there are still people who think we need sugar for energy (not necessarily; we get energy from all our food), that diet colas are better than those containing sugar when they’re potentially worse (because of the chemicals in artificial sweeteners), or who, when asked to name a typical English food say ‘quiche’. I recently read that thousands of primary school children don’t know where eggs come from, which is probably not surprising if it’s also true – as yet another recent survey claims – that one-fifth of adults don’t know which animals sausages and bacon come from, or what the main ingredient of yoghurt is. I know of a very middle-class child with professional parents who didn’t recognise a potato, and I even met one mum who thought the dinky little bits of carrot in a single frozen vegetarian burger amounted to a portion of vegetables. And it’s strange that we can be so squeamish about fresh raw meat and offal when we happily eat far more unsavoury bits of the animal (eyeballs, genitals, you name it) in burgers, kebabs and sausages.

The latest thing is for food to be colour coded with green spots for the healthier options and red for, presumably, foods which contain hydrogenated fats and unacceptably high levels of salt and sugar, but it goes without saying that if you stick to unprepared whole foods most of the time and give the ready meals a wide berth, colour coding is something you won’t need to worry about.

When I was a child growing up in the 1960s and 70s, a healthy meal was meat and three veg followed by a fruit pudding; a takeaway meant the occasional trip to the fish and chip shop, and for something continental there was Batchelor’s Savoury Rice and Vesta Curry. Now we can laugh, but people worried a lot less about food in those days; no one obsessed about their five portions a day, far more people stayed effortlessly slim, women apparently had smaller waistlines, obesity and obesity-related diseases were a lot less common, if not virtually unheard of, and a seriously overweight child was rarer than a white Christmas.

Much has been made in the past about the history of our unhealthy British diet, but it doesn’t seem to me to have been too bad for what was, traditionally, a skinny population inhabiting a chilly little island off the North Sea. We may have had something to learn about the way we cooked our vegetables (like how to steam instead of boiling them to death), but what’s wrong with potatoes, puddings and pies, as long as you’re eating your greens? For my money, a proper home-cooked meal – with or without chips – is worth a dozen fast food hits that leave you with nothing but a craving for something sweet and a raging thirst.

Miracle foods come and go, but whether the current flavour of the month is wheat grass, alfalfa sprouts or Goji berries, the secret of feeding good food to your family without chaining yourself to the kitchen, depriving your children of the things they like to eat and driving yourself round the bend is that really, there is no secret. The answer was here all along.

THE STUMBLING BLOCKS... WHAT PUTS YOU OFF?

Whenever I come across a recipe containing mace (a spice made from the husk of a nutmeg apparently), a liqueur, or some other exotic, hard-to-get-hold-of ingredient I know I’ll never use again, I immediately lose interest. One of my friends said she’s put off by arty photographs of vegetables tied up in little parcels and anything else that looks too fiddly and refined, and to those two objections I would add recipes with too many ingredients, or too many stages from start to finish; something with a long preparation and a long cooking time (one or the other is just about okay), anything that requires a piece of equipment I don’t have and probably haven’t heard of, and, not having a dishwasher, anything that uses lots of pots and pans and makes too much washing up. I’ve also got an irrational fear of recipes containing gelatine for some reason, a perfectly rational fear of soufflés, and until quite recently I’d steer well clear of lentils if they had to be soaked overnight. Why, I don’t know, since putting lentils in a bowl of cold water and rinsing them in a sieve takes about the same amount of time and energy as making a cup of tea, and I do that all the time.

It’s all very well for celebrity chefs to say they want to get women back into the kitchen; what they don’t seem to realise is that many people, myself included, owning nothing more sophisticated than a four-sided cheese grater, feel ruthlessly excluded by references to blini pans, griddles and pasta-making machines before we even start. Having said that, if you’re serious about improving your family’s eating habits, there are a few pieces of equipment you can’t afford to be without, and in homes that have wide-screen TV, DVDs, iPods and game consoles in every room, none of them is exactly hi-tech.

An electric hand whisk is perfect for making cakes, among other things, while a food processor or blender (preferably 2 litre plus) is good for mixing, beating and liquidizing large quantities of anything and everything. The price of electrical goods is always coming down, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding these things for sale at around £5 for a hand whisk and £20 for a food processor. On the manual side, all the mixing bowls, casserole dishes, saucepans, cake tins, whisks, spoons and any other bits and pieces you need can be bought dirt cheap from the local supermarket or pound shop.

If you already have the right equipment and it’s lack of confidence more than anything that keeps you from being more adventurous in the kitchen, all I can say is, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s practically unheard of for anyone to poison their family (by accident anyway) and you’re unlikely to experience anything worse than a burnt saucepan, or food that’s a bit browner around the edges than it was meant to be. Learning to cook is a bit like learning to drive; it only looks difficult from the outside. Once you realise you’re the one in control of the machinery and not the other way round, there’s nothing to it.

Don’t worry about spending too many lonely hours in the kitchen on your own either. For one thing, there’s nothing to stop you listening to the radio or having the television on if you need company; you can also drink alcohol and use your mobile while operating a food processor without breaking the law. It’s even better if you can get the kids to help, which doesn’t mean you have to let them waste your valuable time and make a mess of the kitchen while you grit your teeth and smile indulgently like an imaginary, perfect mother in a TV commercial. What you need is an assistant; someone to get the stuff out of the fridge for you, fetch whatever you need, open the packets, put the vegetable peelings in the right bin, (careful now) help with the tidying up and stir whatever you’re cooking while you save all the best jobs for yourself. Not only is it possible to cut the preparation time right down, the children are picking up a set of good practical skills in the process, without even realising you’re teaching them a lesson. How perfect is that?

But no matter how good your intentions are, there are bound to be times when it all goes pear-shaped and you find yourself eating cream crackers and cheese for dinner three nights in a row, usually when you’re going through that stage of ferrying the children from one place to another after school and the family can’t all be in the same place until bedtime (yours, usually). But there’s always a solution to the eternal time problem, regardless of whether you’re a full-time housewife or a working mum, it’s just a case of finding out what works best for you. My advice is to cook more and do less ironing (or none at all) and think about what to eat in advance when you do have a bit of time. And if you really are that high-powered at work you must be paying someone else to look after your children part of the time, in which case, surely you established that they know what to do with the healthy food in your kitchen before you hired them?

Some people say we’ve lost a whole generation, if not two, to the fast food culture and there’s little hope of things changing for the better in future, but I’m more optimistic than that. For one thing, the social and economic advantages of cooking and eating in your own home speak for themselves. Not 20 years ago, people were predicting we’d be getting all our reading material from the internet by now and that books would be obsolete, but there’s no sign of that happening any time soon. With one health scare after another (BSE, foot-and-mouth, GM foods...) and so much evidence pointing to the ill-effects a terrible diet is having on our children, it can only be a matter of minutes before the tide turns back in favour of home cooking once and for all. Who knows? In five years’ time, fast food outlets could be disappearing at the same rapid rate they were once springing up on the site of every derelict pub and petrol station in Britain.

What worries me more than anything about the current can’t cook won’t cook situation is that future generations of boys are going to grow up and not be able to irritate their wives by reminiscing about Yorkshire pudding and apple pie the way their mums used to make it. What will they say instead? ‘Can you put this in the microwave like she did?’ It just doesn’t have the same ring to it somehow, and that’s a shame for all of us.

A WORD ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS

This is a recipe book, not a diet book, but there’s no getting away from it; if you switch from commercially prepared and processed food to mostly healthy ingredients, and stop fretting about what you can and can’t eat, you and your family are bound to lose weight, look better, feel fitter, have more energy – and be happier. Apart from eating poor quality food, nothing is more likely to make you put on weight than constant, miserable, half-hearted attempts to stop eating the things you like.

I don’t think it’s worth torturing yourself trying to resist the occasional craving for something ‘unhealthy’, whether it’s fast food, drinks or sweets. But realistically, genuine cravings don’t happen every day unless you’re pregnant, and nobody puts on weight by eating a few chocolate bars, or a takeaway once a week. To pile on the pounds, you have to be eating chronically badly practically all the time.

When you stop and think about how you feel two hours after a fast food meal (hungry, thirsty and desperate for something sweet) compared with how you feel when you’ve eaten something truly nourishing, the advantages of real food over junk should be obvious. I don’t know why we expect to have to suffer to be healthy when the opposite is true. It stands to reason that food that makes you feel good – in the long term, not just while you’re eating it – must also be good for you. And whatever makes you feel lousy...

It’s hardly rocket science, is it?

p.s. fizzy drinks...

On the subject of bad eating habits, it’s impossible to ignore what must be the most pointless and easily avoidable evil of them all. Fizzy drinks.

Forget chocolate, chips and bacon sandwiches; even a burger with snotty, bright orange cheese and rubbery bits of gherkin has a certain appeal at times. But what’s with the carbonated water? I don’t get it. Fizzy drinks are either pretty bland or sickly sweet; too gassy, full of sugar or artificial sweeteners, and not only do they not do what they’re supposed to, they actually make you thirstier than you were to start with, so you have to drink even more. It’s brilliant! For the manufacturers, it’s brilliant. Not so great for you, your weight, your teeth and your general health. Yet countless thousands or, God forbid, millions of people still drink this stuff every single day. And from what I’ve seen and heard, some people hardly drink anything else. Why?

EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS

The same ingredients crop up time and time again in these recipes. Keeping a few basic essentials in the cupboard means never having to say you’re sorry but it’s cornflakes for dinner again tonight...

Non-perishables

All the items listed below have a long shelf life, and as well as having a huge number of uses most of them are also very cheap, so you’ll always have something to make a meal out of.

TINS: sardines, tuna, corned beef, chopped tomatoes, sweetcorn, vegetables, fruit, beans, beans, beans and more beans.

DRIED FRUIT: apricots, prunes, raisins and cranberries... N.B. Dried bananas, apple and pineapple tend to be loaded with sugar, so unless you really struggle to get your children to eat fruit any other way, you’re better off with fresh, or even tinned.

RICE: white long grain and brown wholegrain. Pasta. Couscous.

FLOUR: plain, self-raising, wholemeal.

SUGAR: soft brown sugar, white sugar (granulated or caster).

OIL: any vegetable, corn or sunflower oil, plus olive oil and sesame oil.

Lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar (malt and cider).

Tubes of tomato puree, garlic puree and mustard.

STOCK CUBES: beef, pork, lamb, chicken and vegetable. N.B. The cheapest ones contain too much salt, and as stock cubes don’t cost much to begin with you may as well buy better ones. Knorr stock cubes are my favourite, and if they’re good enough for Marco Pierre White... Also instant gravy granules, Marmite, Bovril or Vegemite, and soy sauce.

Herbs & Spices

What on earth did we all do before the use of herbs and spices in everyday cooking finally caught on with the great British public? I remember when spice racks first started popping up in domestic kitchens in the 1970s, like the latest fashion accessory. Until then, the average family had never experienced anything more exotic than mint (with roast lamb) or mixed spice and cinnamon in homemade fruit cake. Now, most people have herbs and spices at home – but some people still aren’t using them.

Herbs and spices add tremendous depth and flavour to all kinds of sweet and savoury foods, and nobody – whether you’re wildly enthusiastic about cooking, or a bit on the lazy side like me – should be without them. (Every supermarket has a huge selection right next to the Oxo cubes, so you can’t miss them.)

Tomato ketchup has its uses, but smother your dinner in tomato ketchup and all it tastes of is tomato ketchup, whereas herbs and spices complement and enhance the flavour of the food itself, without necessarily making it too strong and spicy. Don’t worry about a rebellion at home if you haven’t used them much before. Once your family gets used to eating food that actually tastes of something, they won’t feel the need for a sugar and salt laden chemical fast food hit anywhere near as often as they would if they were still eating a lot of processed junk.

Fresh herbs can also be bought in the supermarket, although the range tends to be more limited, but if you want to use fresh instead of dried herbs in any of these recipes, that’s even better. (I swear one day I’m going to buy only fresh herbs from a roadside market in a remote village somewhere in France – or grow my own. But for me, for now, without a pestle and mortar to my name, it’s mostly dried herbs and ground spices out of a box, I’m afraid.)

Advice about which herbs and spices go well with certain foods is nearly always printed on the packaging you buy them in, but for the record, here are a few of the most popular and versatile ones, and a rough idea of how you can use them.

GINGER: Warm and spicy, especially good with lemon, lime juice, or brown sugar in stir fries, curries, cakes, biscuits, drinks and soup – you name it.

CURRY POWDER/CHILLI POWDER: Usually sold in mild, medium and hot. I tend to buy hot because, rightly or wrongly, I can’t help feeling I must be getting more spice for my money that way. If I want a milder flavour I just use a bit less...

CUMIN: Boosts the flavour of curry and chilli powder and adds something extra.

CORIANDER: Great in curries, Mexican dishes, carrot and other orange vegetable soups.

PARSLEY: Sprinkled over tomato, potato, egg, cheese and fish dishes.

CHIVES: Omelettes, potato salad, vegetables dishes.

ROSEMARY: Roast lamb, Shepherd’s Pie, some chicken dishes; good with roast potatoes.

SAGE: Great with pork, sausages and onions; homemade stuffing.

TARRAGON: Some fish and most chicken dishes (also good mixed with the breadcrumb coating on chicken goujons).

PAPRIKA: Subtly different from CAYENNE PEPPER (which is more fiery where paprika is milder and sweeter), to us amateurs the two are practically interchangeable, so I use paprika more often, in casseroles and goulash and on potato wedges.

MIXED HERBS: A good all-round substitute when you’ve run out of everything else.

MIXED SPICE: Good in cakes and biscuits, and as an alternative to ALL SPICE – which is similar but sharper; tasting more heavily of cloves – in some savoury dishes; stir fries, for example.

CINNAMON: Sweet and spicy, perfect with apples in cakes, puddings and biscuits.

NUTMEG: Good with spinach – especially where spinach is one of the main ingredients – and perfect in spicy fruit cakes, biscuits and banana smoothies.

One more thing I couldn’t live without...

Natural bio live yoghurt has 101 uses in curries, soups, sauces, cakes and smoothies, as well being perfect with fruit, nuts and honey or on its own for breakfast, dessert, or a quick snack. I’ve never found anything better than Yeo Valley bio live yoghurts (natural and fruit). One helping is all you need to get the right balance of probiotics, without wasting money on fashionable, fruit-flavoured ‘healthy’ yoghurt drinks.

Salt

I never cook vegetables in salted water because I don’t think it makes any difference to the flavour, especially if you add a little salt to your meal at the table, which is why a lot of these recipes don’t include salt where you might expect to find it – in some of the sauces and most of the cakes, pastry and batter mixtures, for example. However, if you want to add a pinch of salt when you’re cooking vegetables, fine, but don’t overdo it with potatoes; they absorb a lot of salt from the water, which you’re probably better off without.

Alcohol

Some of the recipes in this book contain a certain amount of alcohol. I never worried about letting my children eat food cooked with wine, sherry, cider or brandy, even when they were very young, but it’s a personal decision, so put the alcohol in or leave it out; whatever you think is appropriate. If you don’t buy much alcohol but like the idea of adding a splash of something to certain recipes, I think sherry has more uses than anything else, in everything from soup to puddings – or you could buy spirits in miniature bottles.

NOTES ON PREPARING VEGETABLES

I didn’t have a clue about fennel before Jamie Oliver came along, and when I finally stumbled across it in the supermarket I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so just in case, here’s everything you to wanted to know about preparing and cooking vegetables but were afraid to ask.

ARTICHOKES: Remove the stalk and the tough or damaged outer leaves, then wash well, slice into quarters lengthways and get rid of the hairy centre bit, or ‘choke”. To cook: In fact, there are no recipes containing artichokes in this book, but if that wasn’t enough to put you off and you feel like adding artichokes to soup, stews or casseroles, good luck to you.

ASPARAGUS: Cut off the hard ends to make all the asparagus spears the same length (although the supermarket should have already done this) and wash in cold water. (Only in season from middle of May to June.) To cook: Simmer gently in boiling water for 5–10 minutes, or place in a casserole dish with a lid, cover with a little cold water and cook in the microwave for 3 –4 minutes.

AUBERGINE: Top and tail; cut into thin slices and soak in a bowl of salty water for about 10 minutes, then strain away the brown, salty water and dry with kitchen paper, or an old, clean tea towel. To cook: Deep-fry the slices in very hot oil – about 3 inches (6 cm) deep will do; you don’t need to fill the whole pan – as quickly as you can to stop them soaking up too much oil.

BEETROOT: Remove the long root and a bit of the stalk, wash and cut into quarters, but don’t bother to peel. To cook: Bring to the boil in cold water and simmer gently for a good half an hour, then the skin can easily be rubbed off. Can be eaten at this stage, or drizzled with olive oil and roasted in the oven.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH: Wash and cut about 1 inch (1.5 cm) off either end. Cut in half lengthways; scrape out the foamy inner bit and remove the pips. Peel each half with a potato peeler or sharp knife (the skin is very tough), then cut into chunks. Alternatively, cut into chunks and cook the squash first, removing the skin after cooking when the squash is much softer. To cook: Boil and mash with butter and milk (starting in cold water, as with boiled potatoes) or drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven.

CARROTS: No need to peel carrots; just top and tail, give them a quick scrape with a sharp vegetable knife and rinse in cold water. To cook: Start with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for a few minutes until carrots are barely soft, with a bit of crunch left.

CELERIAC: Wash, peel and cut into chunks, or grate to have raw in salads (mixed with a little lemon juice to prevent discolouration).

To cook: Bring to the boil and simmer for 15–20 minutes until tender.

COURGETTES: Wash, top and tail. Depending on the size of the vegetable, cut into rounds, or cut lengthways once or twice, then slice from one end to the other to make it into halves or quarters. To cook: Warm oil or butter; add straight to the pan in stir fries and sauces (at same stage as onions and/or peppers) and cook for 10–15 minutes until soft.

FENNEL: Wash, trim and slice lengthways, or chop like an onion. The feathery bit at the top can also be chopped up and used in salads and sauces. To cook: Fry in butter or oil for a few minutes until soft.

PUMPKIN: (see butternut squash above). To cook: Roast, boil and mash, or grate raw pumpkin to make pumpkin muffins.

A note on quantities and sizes used in this book

Unless otherwise specified, the quantities of vegetables and seasoning, etc in each recipe are purely a matter for the reader to decide upon, depending on the size and age of your family, appetites, and so on...

Most recipes state how many people it will serve, but sometimes, this has not been included, as again it depends on your particular family, whether you are serving the recipe as a main course or accompaniment, or simply how large a portion of cake, pudding, etc you want!

One final note, many recipes use a ‘standard’ tin of tomatoes, this means a 14 oz (410 g) sized tin.