Which "Ready Meals" do you recommend? (Food Police cover your eyes)

[DaphneHarvey]

Like most of you, I'm sure, I cook most meals from scratch. We don't eat "fast" food and very very rarely have takeaways (can't afford em!) but ...

every now and then I want a night off from cooking.

I have been known to buy and enjoy

Waitrose or M & S chicken kievs (the whole breast ones)

Sainsbury's lamb kofta kleftiko

Fish fingers

Good quality vegetarian pizzas

Loyd Grossman pasta sauces

But I want to add to my repetoire for my nights off cooking.

What have you bought and shamelessly enjoyed and not felt guilty about?

"Do people who eat ready meals really sit down and think "Yummy! I am drooling with anticipation!" and then feel okay afterwards? (A SERIOUS QUESTION)"

No I think "God I am exhausted after working all day picking up DS, putting him to bed sorting the washing. I have run out of the food I cooked at the weekend, what shall I eat. Oh god non not cheese on toast again," I think... "I'll have the tesco finest lasagne/risotto I bought for just this occasion"

and yes I feel OK afterwards - why wouldn't I? I know some people wouldn't agree with me but it isn't poisonous! And actually I love cheese and toast so much that I eat far too much and feel like shit afterwards - so horses for courses...

Weeeeeelll, I cook the vast majority of my food, but occasionally I buy some ready-made stuff too.
I don't know where you live, but in London you can get hold of some fab fish things from two fishwives. Very convenient and very yummy.
I also like to take my lunch to work, and I second the Sainsbury's Super Naturals.

See I would rather think "Thank God! I now have time to do something for myself and make myself something delicious to eat!"

Although actually we eat with the kids most of the time

If DH is away I will buy 15 tonnes of prawns and spent the evening with some chili sauce, hummous and a bottle of wine - heavenly

I don't know why you SHOULD feel crap afterwards, I just feel physically horrid - maybe I don't react well to preservatives etc. like someone mentioned previously

I need all the preservatives I can get.

At 2 DS is too young to stay up late enough to eat with me after work though we do have lunch together at the weekend.

perhaps I should think "oh how lovely I can spend my one hour left before bed cooking something lovely" but often I don't. Sometimes I cook some tortellini and puty some passata on top, or eat hummous qwith ryvita (cos its all thats left in teh fridge) but just as often a quick microwaved lasagne and vegging out in front of some mindless TV (or mindless mumsnetting) is just the ticket.

M&S chicken jalfrezi

M&S cheese & onion quiche

Also once had a Champneys's paella from Sainsbury, was very nice too.

I personally prefer a hot bubble bath with a good book as a way of relaxing to cooking. The fact that I don't find cooking relaxing does not make me uncaring or a slob, it just makes me someone who doesn't enjoy cooking.

I am by the way a reasonable cook (most of my friends would say I am quite good my standards are quite high so I say adequate rather than good).

does a sandwich count as ready meal or is that acceptable?

In fact just checked the ingredients of my lunch (Tesco finest Chicken carbonara) - no artificial preservatives, flavours or colours no hydrogenated fat. All ingredients are things you would see in a normal kitchen cupboard (won't bore you with them all). Doesn't seem so terrible.

kewcumber, i'm right there with you. speaking as someone who rarely gets the chance to start cooking until nearly 9pm.

and i do enjoy cooking and am a good plain cook! i refuse to be considered a lazy slob because i'm looking to save time at chuffin 9 at night ffs!

gah can't believe i have risen to this normally i am immune to these threads.

Kewcumber - there is quite a bit of snobbery on MN about ready & processed meals. The fact is that a lot (though of course not all) of ready meals and processed foods are in fact quite good nowadays and contain very little in the way of artifical flavourings and additives.

Ready meals don't generally taste as good as home-made, even the good ones but that is a sacrifice some of us are happy to make sometimes because we prefer to do other things rather than cook.

What you have failed to understand however with your last question is that it doesn't matter that the meal has no (or very litle) crap in it.

What you have to understand is that you are fundamentally failing as a woman and mother purely by the fact that you choose to eat
and occasionally may even feed to your children (gasp !!) something that you haven't lovingly prepared an possibly even grown from scratch scratch yourself .

and I speak as someone who cooked virtually all her food from scratch before DS. A few years relying heavily on tesco's isn't the end of the world on planet Kewcumber. In fact I have decided that clean bodies and clothes are way over-rated too

Kewcumber yes I think it is more about processed food, rather than convenience. It doesn't matter whether it's put together at home or by Tescos, if it's all wholefoods then it's good for you. Like you say, if it's hydrogenated stuff from a lab somewhere then it's probably not so good

Lazycow I don't think that's strictly fair

And I agree lazycow that if you hate cooking then you wouldn't want to do it

I do not, for example, exercise

But for me, food is like sex. You have to put some time and effort in for the sheer utterly carnal ecstasy that comes at the end

are cross-posted there!

I'll consider myself a failure then (don't tell the social worker though!).

On the upside - am a very happy fqailure and obviously have the constitution of an ox because don't react to virtually anything I eat - though agree bought is rarely as tasty as home-made.

I don't go blotchy, or get food hangovers (what the hell are they?), I don't bloat eating wheat or start dribbling mucous when I eat dairy (unless I have sinusitis already). Am I a miracle of genetics? Sadly not that big a miracle as I do get fat when I eat too much

I love m and s tuna pasta bake

I eat it almost every night when dh is away

most ready meals are disgusting however IMO and full of water and fillers so not nutritious (like baby food jars)

Morrison's indian range v. good, esp. lamb rogan and prawn jalfrezi (better than waitrose IME)
Waitrose/M&S lasagne
Tesco chicken, leek and bacon filo pie.

In my brow-furrowing guilt, I checked the packaging on these, and they don't seem to have a hideous amount of additives in either

In our house thursdays is ready meal night. It's the one day we've both been at work, and have work the next day, so only seem to have about six and a half spare minutes in which to grab a bite.

MP OK OK I am Exaggerating a tad (a trait I have ) but I am really finding MN hard work today.

I really must step away from these sorts of food threads as there is something about them that winds me up in a way that none of the others seem to (including all the old chestnuts such as WOHM vs SAHM, bfeeding etc, mother and toddler parking spaces)

Normally I steer clear of these but today I seem to have got more involved than I shopuld

pmsl - just read the OP and realised I haven't read it properly...

"Like most of you, I'm sure, I cook most meals from scratch"

OOPS, no, some maybe half not most!

lazycow - it is easy to get wound up sometimes. And sometimes people don't mean what you read into things but it is hard sometimes to read people describing the food that I half live on as "minging, disgusting etc". But ultimately you do what works for you. I play the single working mother card far too often and I honestly don;t have a problem with that it was my choice but the reality is that it does make a difference to the way you live your life.

I have my own standards and am happy to live by them, they're just quite low is all! On the other hand I'm quite easy to please/impress

I love dr oetken pizzas, they are the only nice ones available, I think. At least in Exeter, where the supermarket scene is not so exciting.
I'm tempted at times with ready meals, but sadly I can't digest them very well.

what is this problem everyone seems to have with various types of food. I'm beginning to feel like a garbage disposal unit!

ready meals - check
dairy - check
wheat - check
additives - check
random crap - check....

LOL Kew.
At work, someone asked whether I felt constantly bloated as I eat "such an awful lot of bread ".
I thought it was normal to have a butty at lunchtime, but apparently it's not.

m and s do a lovely spinach and aparagus pack with a butter sauce that is hideously expensive but delicious. also their gastropub boeuf bourgignon with gratin potatoes is lovely.

A quick, cheap and sort of ready meal is M&S tinned chicken in white wine sauce - just heat up and serve with pasta. Never would have thought of using this myself but came across it in a delia quick cheats recipe.