Get recipes delivered to your door: The new app that lets you do a weekly food shop in 5 minutes or less

{This is a collaborative post}

Are you tired of supermarket trips every week? After a long, hard week of working and parenting, the last thing you should have to worry about is doing the weekly food shopping. Getting up, getting ready and going to the supermarket is just another chore on our long list of things to do, never mind the tiring process of deciding your dinners for the week ahead, making sure your fussy eaters will be satisfied and writing your shopping list. You deserve to spend your weekends relaxing and doing activities you enjoy... And that’s exactly what you can do with the new Plate Up app! 

Launched just last year, the Plate Up app lets you order the ingredients for recipes by top culinary experts and get them delivered to your door by your preferred supermarket. They are currently partnered with Tesco, Waitrose and Ocado. There are over 300 meals at your fingertips (with new recipes being added all the time) and you can complete a weekly food shop in just a few taps. Better yet, you can get your weekly food delivery from the comfort of your sofa and in 5 minutes or less! 

Fantastic Family Time at Harvester Restaurants

JJ hits the ripe old age of 15 in a couple of weeks and his favourite celebratory thing to do is eat, so when Harvester invited us to the Horse and Groom in Polegate, East Sussex we jumped at the chance. I'll be honest, our family used to be loyal Harvester customers but about five years ago they had a menu overhaul and we stopped going as we didn't like the changes. With this in mind and another new menu, I was keen to go and see what Harvester could offer our family of five nowadays.

I won't beat around the bush, we had a great meal at the Harvester. None of us had been to the Horse and Groom before and it is a super venue, there are a few different seating areas, all with modern furnishings and lights, so different to the Harvester of my childhood when there were pitchforks on the walls! There were still the classic elements to remind me I was in a Harvester, like the salad bar, help yourself fresh bread rolls, open fronted kitchen and rotisserie chicken cabinet.

On arrival at the Horse and Groom we were greeted quickly by Mo and he asked if we wanted a children's menu. I questioned if the girls could have it as they are 11 and it suggests on the website that it is for 10 years and younger but Mo, said it was fine and the portion sizes should be suitable too. This was great to hear as the £5.99 price tag for a meal, drink and dessert is fabulous.

Mo then suggested my girls would be too old for colouring but I knew that at least one of them would want it, so we had a laugh about how hard it is to judge children, as Mo said many turn their noses up at his offer of the kiddie activity bag and crayons.

We were shown to a small area with just three tables and one was occupied when we arrived but by the time we left it was just us. Everywhere felt very clean and taken care of and its always nice when you can see into the kitchen and the chefs are in fresh whites.

We choose our drinks and all went for the same option of help yourself soda. My girls love this as it means they can add flavours like vanilla, peach and cherry to their Pepsi, lemonade or Robinsons squash. I personally just like the straight Diet Pepsi and it is good to have the option to refill as many times as I like for £2.90.

Review: Lunch at Jamie's Italian Trattoria, Tunbridge Wells

Our family love to go out together and enjoy some good food and it is always nice to try somewhere new and explore a new town too. So last Thursday we headed into Kent to Tunbridge Wells to have a browse and also lunch at Jamie's Italian Trattoria. Now obviously we all know the Jamie Oliver name but none of us were familiar with this restaurant concept so we were excited to try it out, especially as my twin girls really love pasta.

We were pleased to see that Jamie's Italian Trattoria is an easy walk from the train station in Tunbridge Wells. It is situated on the High Street between the main shopping mall and the more up-market Pantiles area. The high street is a great one to browse along as there are loads of very nice shops to both look in and also just window shop.

Jamie's Italian Trattoria was easy to find with double shop frontage and it looked very authentic Italian from outside, when you go inside it is heavily themed and very pleasant but we couldn't really put our finger on what style we thought they had gone for. There are exposed ceilings, paintings on walls made to look old, exposed pipe work and lots of sanded wood - my husband commented it looked almost Cuban and I could see where he was coming from.

Top 10 tips for helping your children eat a better diet

Of course as parents we know how important it is that our children eat a good balanced diet, we want them to have a healthy plate and to eat from each food group and meet the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but let's be honest, it is not always easy is it?

Sometimes you think you are doing a good job, perhaps you make a spaghetti bolognese and you have even taken the trouble to grate up some carrots and mushrooms and hide them in the sauce and you are feeling all angelic until someone explains to you that the jar of ready pasta sauce you used contains a high level of salt, artificial sweeteners and perhaps a preservative like sodium benzoate which has been linked to hyperactivity in children when combined with colourings!

It is an absolute minefield nowadays to know what is OK and what isn't, this is why so many families are reverting back to basics and following diets like paleo, that is a step too far for my family but I am concerned about my family eating well and that is why I signed up to Organix and their No Junk Challenge. For the whole of this week I will only feed my family a food product if I completely know and understand what it contains. So if the label has letters and numbers on it under the ingredients I'll take this as a sign that they should not be eating it. Take a look at the top 12 list of additives to avoid, aptly called the Dirty Dozen!

OK, so now we know what to avoid but we still have the issue that it is not always easy to get children to try new things and to eat variety and healthily, so ere are my top 10 tips -

1. Get your children involved with growing your own produce. I have found that mine are far more likely to try something new when they have spent time planting the seeds and lovingly caring for the plants as they grew.
2. In a similar vein, get the kids cooking with you. Yes it takes a little longer but they gain so much from it and again are much more willing to try out new food items if they have invested time in their preparation/ cooking.
3. Once your children start cooking with you, why don't you encourage them to use their imagination and to make up a recipe. We often have JJ's pasta bake and how proud do you think he feels?
4. Play with some food and that way the child becomes familiar with it, why don't you make an edible picture with broccoli trees, carrot and beetroot flowers, cut using tiny cutters and noodles coloured with green food dye to make your grass.
5. Teach your children that there must always be at least three colours on their plate, so even if they are having fish fingers and chips (which are both yellow foods in case you are wondering) you then need to get two more colours on the plate, so empower your children to choose their own, perhaps cucumber and cherry tomatoes? Unfortunately salad does not go down well with the kids in my house and it would probably end up being green beans and carrots, my kids do love their cooked veg.
6. It might seem obvious but repetition is key, especially when they are very young. A child might reject something the first 8 times it is one their plate and then all of a sudden they will give it a go and perhaps even find they like it. Of course make sure the plate has items on it you know will be enjoyed as well as the new item you are trying to introduce.
7. Most of our meals are 'family service' rather than coming out ready on the plate. This means we have bowls of all the foods on the table and we help ourselves, this allows the child to feel as if they have some control. of course you can still have rules with this, my children always have to choose at least two veg.
8. Reward charts and praise always goes a long way with children I find. Until recently we had sticker charts most weeks where the children could work towards targets (it could be trying two new veg) and then if they achieve them they can choose a small reward, an extra bedtime story, a family bike ride etc.
9. Each week I plan our menu before I order the shopping and I make sure I ask each family member to choose one meal. Some prove unpopular with another family member so then I'll ask what we can do to make it better for them, it might be adding a corn on the cob as a side order, or serving the sauce separate to the pasta, as long as I'm cooking the same meal for everyone I don't mind making a few small changes.
10. I'll leave you with this last genius tip from Organix - Give them pads of paper and suggest they become restaurant critics, marking each dish out of ten and giving comments. Provide lots of little dishes – like a picnic – to encourage them to try each flavor and write down notes on the taste or texture.

Blackberry picking last year meant that my girls then tried lots of new recipes with blackberries - 

smoothies, muffins, bakewell pudding and so on...

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Indian Feast Budget Family Meal #Shop #Cbias

I do love a bargain when I am shopping, in fact I hate to pay full price for my food shop so you will always find me with a fistful of vouchers if I'm in store or trawling the cashback and voucher sites if I'm doing an online shop. I think it is half the fun to see how much you can save, I'll share with you my top three tips to make your money go as far as possible -

1. Shop around, see what special offers are on and don't be afraid to split your weekly shop between 2, 3 or even 4 shops and make sure one of those is somewhere like Aldi or Lidl. Those Germans have very high standards and the food is fabulous and cheap.
2. Buy value brand and frozen products. For a long time I was a snob and only bought the premium brands and then I discovered that for certain products like rice, tinned pulses, tinned tomatoes, vegetables and pasta there really is little difference except price.
3. Don't feel you have to eat meat with every meal. You can make some substantial dinners that are vegetarian and I promise you won't feel cheated, take a look at my Indian feast -

Last weekend I was challenged by CBias to create a meal for my family (that is five people) for under £10.  Immediately I thought veggie and Indian as these are things I know I can save money on whilst no-one would have any idea it wasn't an expensive take-away.

I had headed off to Tesco to buy the ingredients I needed but I also made sure I used what I had at home, it is important to have a well stocked store cupboard when you are cooking curry as the spices can be used time and time again. I have also recently discovered some fabulous frozen items at Sainsburys. They do a 1kg bag of chopped spinach in handy little portions. The bag is £1.50 or you can mix and match (I got sliced mixed peppers too) for 2 bags for £2.50. The amount of spinach I used in the curry cost about 13p. I also recently bought some frozen ready crushed garlic and ginger portions, 2 packs for £2.50. These are not necessarily cheaper than the fresh but they make life much easier and my hands stay fresh smelling!

For our Indian feast, this is what I chose to cook -

When I worked out how much it had cost me to produce this meal for the five of us it worked out to be £9.88, less than £2.00 a portion and I even managed to freeze some of the dahl too.

I got all the ingredients out ready to cook and you'll see that there is a mix of branded and value ingredients there. Some of the things like the Knorr stockpots I was lucky to have in the cupboard but often I'll just buy shop brand own stock cubes as they are far cheaper and once you add spices to an Indian meal you do not need premium items.

I enjoy cooking curry and once you have mastered the basics it is really easy I find. Keeping it simplistic all you have to do is - finely chop your onions, add those and the garlic (& ginger if you are using it) to a pan and lightly fry. Once the onions start to become transient add in your dry spices and cook for another 2-3 minutes, this is when the flavours really start to release. Then it is time for either the stock or passata, whatever you are using as a base for your curry and the main veggie ingredients and cook for however long it takes for the veggies to become tender.

As well as cooking from scratch I have no objection to using some shop bought items, especially when they are on special price. We enjoyed Pataks Poppadoms for half price (just £1.00 for 10) and Tesco own light naan breads, which were surprisingly good and only 80p for 5.

We all enjoyed our Indian feast the other night. I need to get brave and try to make my own naan bread next time.

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Hello Fresh Meal Boxes (Review)

I’d not heard of HelloFresh before when they contacted me but when I mentioned their meal delivery service to a few friends I was told to bite their hand off for a complimentary hamper to review, as apparently they provide fabulous restaurant quality meals without the effort. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I took a look on their website and it was all well laid out and easy to understand. There are three types of box of choose from – classic, vegetarian and family. Immediately my eye was drawn to the family box as that is what I have to cater for, a family of 5. Whilst the meals look very nice, I found them to be far fancier than my children would normally eat.  I would not say my kids are fussy but we have average home cooked family meals – things like shepherd’s pie, spaghetti bolognese, chicken stir fry or chilli. In the main these were not the type of meals provided by Hello Fresh. Some of the ones I saw reminded me of the meals I enjoyed when I used to frequent nice restaurants in London.

I then took a look at the classic box and found this to be better as you could do meal swaps, I’m not sure why you can’t do swaps with the family box. The swaps meant I found three meals that I thought all my family would eat and I went ahead and placed my order for Tuscan meatballs, Doona chicken and Orecchiette with herbed pork. The classic box is packed for either 2 or 4 diners and I choose the box for 4 as I felt this would be enough for the 5 of us, as the kids would not eat a full adult portion each.

I did not order using the regular method as I had to email my contact my choice and also delivery instructions. My order appeared to be dealt with efficiently and I received an email to remind me that my box would be arriving and it stated the delivery instructions that Hello Fresh had recorded for me, sadly these were not the same ones I had provided.

Boxes can be delivered to your door on a Tuesday or Thursday and will arrive between 9am and 4pm, time slots are not available, so you either need to be in to receive the box or to have allocated somewhere safe for it to be left.

The three meals for 4 persons box costs £59.00 including delivery and you literally do not need anything else to complete your meals except oil, salt and pepper. That works out at roughly £20 per day and £5.00 per person. This is higher than we would normally spend but the quality is good and if you like things made simple for you then I don’t think it is that extortionate. I can see Hello Fresh being really popular with couples without kids who work long hours but still enjoy cooking.

My box arrived on the day it was scheduled and the food was very well packed, I probed the meat to test the temperatures and it was fine for delivery, the chicken was at 6.7 degrees which is slightly higher than I might have liked but I think this was because the plastic carton is too large and the ice packs had difficulty reaching the meat. The other meat products were perfect at 4 degrees. The box looked good and the food temping, my issue was that two out of the three meals in the box where not what I had ordered.

With the classic box, you can order your 3 or 5 meals and then there are swaps available if you think that something might not be popular.  The swaps I had specifically requested did not arrive with me.  I emailed my contact at Hello Fresh straight away and she was very apologetic but here I am now over two weeks later and I have not heard another word, I hope this is not their normal customer service.  Had I of paid for these meals I would have kicked up a massive fuss as I ended up with two meals that I knew my family would not eat and I gave away unwanted food – like duck, lemons, rocket, radishes etc.

The ingredients appeared to be good in the main and I was happy with the portion sizes except the new potatoes, I felt the were skimpy, what you see in the bag below is supposed to be enough for 2 people and one of them is green so needs chopping off. I'm not sure if you can see either, on the recipe card it shows about 9 potatoes as the portion for 2 people, whereas I was sent 5.

The one meal I had ordered I did make following the recipe card included and it was excellent, my husband and I really enjoyed it. I did find it slightly odd to take the meat out of sausages and to fry it as mini meatballs but it worked!

In conclusion, I would not order a Hello Fresh meal box again for a number of reasons. Firstly I am not impressed with their customer service and sending the wrong meals, second I can cook better meals for much less cost and as I have the time to do so it would be silly not to and lastly the meal selection is just too fancy for my average family.

As I said before if you are a busy Working couple who want easy restaurant quality meals that you can cook within about 30 minutes then Hello Fresh might well suit you. Try a box out and use HELLOPAR1 for £10 off your first box.

We were sent this box free of charge for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.

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