to consider living on ready meals from now on

[crochetmonkey74]

I HATE cooking and hate food shopping as well- last night as I popped into M and S for a food hall browse I pondered the idea of living on their ready meals from now on- does anyone do this? Do you get sick of it? Is it really expensive?

I live alone so no one else to consider meal plan wise- are there other shortcuts that are as easy but maybe a little more healthy/ frugal?

I once opened one of those prepared potatoes Gratin and it smelled kinda a sour.
Also not convinced they use the freshest ingredients like you would when cook from scratch.

Why are people complaining about how bad ready meals are and telling OP to eat a baked potato with beans as if beans aren't processed and full of salt.

@BastardMonkfish

Why are people complaining about how bad ready meals are and telling OP to eat a baked potato with beans as if beans aren't processed and full of salt.

Because home cooking of any kind is fetishised at the moment.

DH and I are eating loads of them at the moment. We're losing weight and it takes all the effort out of working out how many calories there are in everything. The Waitrose 'Thrive' range is lovely

" over half your daily salt allowance?"

Why is it wrong for one meal (out of 2 in my case) to have over half your daily salt allowance? As long as the other meal doesn't....

@speakout

SimonJT

Strange ingredient list- they only add up to 30% of the total ingredients- where is the missing food?

Eh? The quantified ingredients add up to more than 30% and its not hard to fill in the gaps.

For example the water, coconut milk and onion are somewhere between 6% and 20%. Let's say the water is 19%, coconut milk 18% and onion 8%. Then that leaves 7% to be split between the remaining 11 ingredients.

Chickpeas (20%), Water, Coconut Milk, Onion, Red Lentils (6%), Black Lentils (6%), Celery, Spinach (4%), Kale (4%), Garlic (4%), Tomato Paste (4%), Red Chilli, Maple Syrup, Ginger, Sunflower Oil, Cumin Seeds, Garam Masala, Sea Salt, Turmeric, Ground Cumin, Ground Coriander, Fenugreek Leaves.

I am very interested in the idea of it helping me lose weight too.

I live alone too and my health isn't great so I struggle with cooking too.

There are shortcuts of course. The ones I use are

Using ready prepped veggies - carrot sticks, celery sticks, ready peeled and chopped sweet potato and squash that kinda thing

I've recently discovered McCain jacket potatoes. Intended for microwave but I don't have one so I do them in the oven. Only takes 45 mins. Crispy skins, fluffy potato - yummy

Tinned meals - still kinda ready meals really but you can choose healthier options. I like ratatouille and veg curries and chilli

Batch cook - yea kind of the opposite of what you're meaning but it doesn't really take longer to make 4 portions as one. I tend to make things like chilli, casseroles (super easy the way I do it, just throw all ingredients in a Pyrex, bung in oven, hour later all done) then portion into foil trays, label and freeze. Then on days I don't feel like cooking I have a "home made ready meal" just need to add some sort of carb although not always.

No cook carbs - bread, wraps, pita bread, rolls you get the idea.

As a scot soup is practically our national dish, if I'm making soup a batch will do me 6-8 servings

I use simply cook. I like it because it's just the non perishable ingredients like spices, pastes, garnishes, and so on, ready in the cupboard for when I want to cook them without any pressure. I also can substitute any fresh ingredients for ones we like better. We are too fussy for ready meals, there's always something we're not keen on, or something missing. I find simply cook recipes to be quick and easy and I often cook them on weeknights.

Here's my referral code for anyone who wants to try a free box (I get one too).
Free box

Ready meals don’t taste as good as homemade, but when you factor in the absolute faff of cooking every night, I’d say the ready meal option is totally worth it!

Oh, and the simply cook firecracker chicken noodles are amazing, my 15 year old is always asking for them.

I used to live with a well paid professional man who did exactly this- nice quality ready meals from M&S or Waitrose every night, or a quick pasta dish.

Don’t do it; it costs a fortune, they’re full of salt and they’re really not that healthy. My housemate was a good 3.5 stone overweight. Not something I’d risk.

Eco catastrophe. We don't have a right to convenience at all costs - freak incidents like we've just seen in Canada and Germany are just going to get more frequent.
(Obvs makes sense for people with motor issues & other disabilities to have ready meals, don't get me wrong, but OP didn't mention that)

"Ready meals don’t taste as good as homemade,

Debatable. They taste better than my homemade food and the food I grew up with.

Debatable. They taste better than my homemade food and the food I grew up with.

I would agree with that! My mother is an exceptionally bad cook.
Vesta curries and school meals saved the day!

Many many elderly people live on ready meals and seem to do just fine.

M&S do some really great ready meals, I like them for an easy treat, but with 4 of us it would get very expensive. I’d consider it if I was on my own though.

@lllllllllll

Ready meals don’t taste as good as homemade, but when you factor in the absolute faff of cooking every night, I’d say the ready meal option is totally worth it!

My mums a terrible cook. Ready meals were always preferable to her home cooked food!

I’m an ok cook, but ready meals are probably more exciting than what I cook day to day.

You can make some ‘ready’ meals so quickly with fresh ingredients though. I live on eg mozzarella, avocado and tomato salad atm. Takes literally 2 mins to assemble. I have 2 pots of basil I grew from seed which is super-easy to get going in the pot, and then makes the kitchen look and smell lovely as long as you water it. I still have half a pack of seeds left.

I would make the things in boxes a rare treat - and opt for something that would be complicated to make. Eg I like Charlie Bingham fish pie.

My mum's 82 and largely lives on ready meals, and sometimes the pre-prepared fresh stuff.

She has fruit with breakfast and does a bit of extra fresh veg if she feels the need but it doesn't seem to be doing her any harm...outside of main meals she lives on rice cakes and sweets which is more of a concern!

@valadon68

Eco catastrophe. We don't have a right to convenience at all costs - freak incidents like we've just seen in Canada and Germany are just going to get more frequent. (Obvs makes sense for people with motor issues & other disabilities to have ready meals, don't get me wrong, but OP didn't mention that)

Are they really that bad for the environment? Cooking a meal on a mass scale with very little waste calculated into the recipe to feed hundreds/thousands of people vs lots of hobs and ovens being turned on in peoples homes for scratch cooking and the potential for waste that goes with it. The ready meal factory will use every bit of meat whereas we at home are more likely only to use the nice pieces we like the look of. I'm not convinced everyone cooking from scratch is better for the environment.

@warmfluffytowels

Apart from four different sugars and over half your daily salt allowance?

Okay, so how would you make that at home to get rid of the salt and sugar?

Lots of these meals cooked "from scratch" are probably no healthier than the microwave versions - and at least with those, you know exactly what's in them in terms of weight, fat, calories, salt and sugar. Most home cooks won't know that.

Well for a start I wouldn’t put four different sugars in...........

@crochetmonkey74

thanks for this thread. I think I'm gonna get some M&S ready meals for my dinners.

also I crochet too and I wonder if we are the same vintage ('74) 😁

zing exactly the same vintage!

DH made a wonderful Thai curry today out of a Co-op readymeal: by adding fresh Thai basil, lime leaves, galangal, chillies, palm sugar and a host of other ingredients. I think we will be doing this occasionally at least.

It's a good point, but I'm not sure whether it balances out all the packaging - yes, it's hard for a lot of people to buy unpackaged single ingredients, but these probably arrive at the factories in masses of packaging too.