I'm going to cook everything from scratch this week

[CadenceRoastingByAnOpenFire]

Does anyone want to join me?

I'm probably being really over ambitious as I'm a terrible cook but I'm fed up of eating and serving readymade crap. I think finding the time to prepare and cook it all will be a real struggle too as I struggle for time already but I'm willing to give it a go!

Any advice/support would be much appreciated or if anyone is in the same boat as me and would like to give this a bash please feel free to join!

I am going shopping to later to buy the ingredients (wish me luck). I've decided to start by making what seem the easier recipes so I've got: oven chips, vegetable crisps, houmous, creamy tofu dip, cream cheese dip, pizza, chicken nuggets, tofu burgers, banana cakes, flapjacks and oat biscuits. Other meals we'll be eating this week are jacket potatoes with cheese and salad and a chicken dinner. Breakfast will be porridge or natural yogurt with puréed apples or berries. Absolutely no ready made food will be entering my cupboards this week (and hopefully ever!).

You're making your own chicken nuggets from scratch?

Yes.

It's skinless chicken cut into 2 inch long pieces, dipped in egg and then into breadcrumbs, cornflour, pepper and paprika. Fried for 3-4 mins on each side.

(In the shires we call those 'goujons' ) Sounds great. I always cook from scratch so probably not much use to you as a pom-pom waver :) But good luck

Thank you, pom-pom waving much appreciated! I think I will call them goujons too, goujons sound tastier than nuggets .

Cadence, I make those sort of chicken nuggets but cook them on a baking tray in the oven, easier than standing over a frying pan.

I try to cook from scratch most of the time. There are a couple of ways I make it a bit easier: I cook double (or even triple) quantities where possible and freeze the extra for easy meals another night; I do quite a bit of rolling over of ingredients from one night to the next, the famous Mumsnet one is the everlasting chicken, but I do similar with ham and other joints; I also use leftovers for lunch the next day, so a spoonful of chilli or curry with some salad in a wrap or pitta goes down well.

Good luck, shaking my pompoms for you.

Are you making the oven chips, veg crisps, hummus etc or is that what you need to use up?

Gosh your list sounds very ambitious - all those dips and veg crisps!
I would aim for the basic meals from scratch, and then if I had the energy think about the 'treats'...

If you do double quantity of spag Bol you could make a lasagne another night with the extra. We get two nights out of a lasagna (but there is only myself and DH), I prep a nice big one.

Also if I do a roast chicken, I make chicken curry the next night using the leftover chicken from the previous night. Then make stock from the carcass, and a soup or casserole from that in the next day or two...

Try to double up like that and it will be less time consuming.

Best of luck! I will shake pom poms for you!

I cook a lot from scratch, but often use jars of sauce for spag Bol/curry. Made curry from scratch on Friday night and it was FAB!!!! It would have been fabber if I had prepped the sauce the night before/earlier in the day and then when dinnertime came I could have cooked up the curry faster - may do this next time!

All the best!!!

Thank you very much for all the encouragement :)

moomin thank you for the tip, sounds much easier to use the oven.

snowdown, yes that's the list of what I'm going to attempt to make!

castlelough, I know it's probably a bit ambitious but my dc love to snack - particularly the youngest who's 3. They're quite good in terms of eating lots of fruit and they love carrots/pepper/cucumber sticks with dips but we seem to run out of dips quickly so I thought if we have the ingredients here I can make up more when we run out. We made the chive dip last night and it was very, very easy - bit of cream cheese, bit of natural yogurt and fresh chopped up chives. It was lovely and I feel better knowing what's in the food we're eating. Also, although they're generally good eaters, they do ask for crisps and biscuits and I hate giving them things I know are packed with sugar and all sorts of other crap. They have to take 2 snacks to school too, one a piece of fruit an the other a cereal/breakfast/health bar or 'healthy' biscuits and I find it so annoying that these products that market themselves as being healthy are actually full of rubbish. So the treaty bits I'm making are mainly for them to take to school. Thank you also for the tips on making food last (you too moomin). Our shopping was really expensive yesterday but a lot of those ingredients will last a while - flour, spices etc., and if I can batch cook I can freeze some bits for a later date.

Thanks again for the support .

Wow. I cook all meals from scratch every day, but snacks are a challenge too far for me! Mine snack on fruit and yoghurt mostly. Yy to making your own ready meals- making double and freezing is no more work than making one portion, and leaves you with one easy meal prepared when you need it. Good luck

Hi pregnantpause, your name rings a bell. I think you were on the thread where we were listing what we were eating every day in order to lose weight. I was another name then but it was cadence something or other. How did you go with that in the end? I managed to lose weight for my holiday and although I've kept that weight off I haven't lost anymore which I was hoping to do before Christmas. Oh well. Maybe this cooking from scratch will mean I lose a few lb if I'm not gorging on sugary snacks and ready made food full of crap!

Today I made pizza for lunch, tbf I have made it before so it wasn't too much of a challenge. Then made banana cakes for dessert which were surprisinglylovely. For breakfast I puréed some blueberries and mixed them with natural yogurt which went down well. I feel like I've spent the whole day in the kitchen though! . I've stuck a couple of pizza bases in the freezer for a later date and the cakes will be okay in the fridge for five days so made 20 extra to use throughout the week.

I just try to discourage snacking. Stick the cake in the freezer too portioned up, 20secs in microwave and it'll be fine. It'll go stale in the fridge.

Oh! That was ages ago, I don't know what I lost but I went from a size 18 to 12, am now 14 after Christmas.

Good luck with your first dry tomorrow Cadence :-)

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