I am changing our families diet radically. How hard is it going to be, honestly!!!!

[Blossomhill]

We are off to Bibic next week to help my dd (5 and a half with sn) and part of it involves dietary change.
I will hold my hands up and say we do eat quite a bit of convenience food and that is going to and has to change.
I want to completely change the way I eat and cook and want to stop using processed foods for good. I have to say the recent Sudan1 and Jamie Oliver school dinners has confirmed that I need to do that for my whole family.
I am just so worried that I will need to go shopping everyday and that it will take lots of tim, although I am prepared to do it for the sake of my children's health and well being. Don't get me wrong they do eat lots of vegtables, fruit and I do cook some fresh meals. What I mean is they don't eat Turkey Twizzlers or things like that.
I am hoping to make my own bread as a very kind friend of mine gave me hers.
Any of you that know me know that I am not very organised, scatty even. I really need to do this to firstly help dd with ehr concentration and sn and obviously ds is just as important too.
So please tell me realistically what I should expect, if there are any time saving tips, recipies I may find useful.
Thank you, you are all so kind xxx

I just bought Jamie's Dinners - the book that goes with his new series. It loks really good so how about that as a place to start?

Marthamoo - Is that in connection with the school dinner programme????x

My kids live on pasta! They love it with tomato and basil sauce on. Quick and easy and healthy with some chicken breast.

BIBIC actually give some fairly good common sense advice regarding food and suggest changes that are not too extreme.

Sacha - my kids love pasta so that's a good start...

I do know I am def. going to need a dishwasher lol

Maddiemo - do they? Oh that's reassuring, thanks How long ago was your trip???

I think bibic advice aginst too much pasta bh!

About a year ago. I thought they would be very extreme re food but they were not.

We have changed sugar, drink more pineapple juice and just a bit more observant when food shopping now.

Have you not been back since maddiemo?

Yes it is bh, here

Waterstones have it for £12 too.

No, although we found it useful we have not felt the need to visit again. At the moment we are going to start private SALT locally as we feel that is what ds really needs.

ds and i don't eat much processed stuff really. for lunch we have things like pasta with basic tom sauce, or just lots of chopped veg and olive oil. baked spuds, soup etc.

teas for this week are:
macaroni with brocoli and cauli
veggy lasagne
pasta and veg sauce
baby roast spuds and quorn casserole
lentil bolognese
homemade pizza's

all these take about 30 mins at the most excapt the lasagne. i don't really cook anything in advance, ds just goes on cbeebies while i cook

none of them have anything processed in(apart from the quorn) sometimes i use tinned toms, sometimes fresh.

i am not v organised either but do make a list of 7 meals at the start of the week, write a list of ingrediants and buy them. we don't really have any food in that you can just eat iyswim, most of it has to be cooked so if we are late in ds will have scrambled eggs or beans on toast.

not sure if i've answered anything you asked but hope some of it helps

make a v easy tomato pasta sauce (make masses & freeze some) by putting onions, carrots, celery, garlic in food processor and whizzing, then gently saute this with olive oil, after 10 mins put in a good few tins tomatoes (whizz these too) and simmer for as long as you can bear it, adding whatever takes your fancy (worcester sauce, tabasco if you like chilli, a splodge of ketchup) and some finely chopped herbs like basil, parsley. freeze in small tupperware for defrosting whenever you need it & use as base for bolognaise, pizza topping, or just stir into pasta with lumps of mozarella.

I thought pasta is good for you, I'm not exagerating - they eat it most days. They don't like chips or waffles or even potato! They will eat roast potato with a roast dinner if it is covered in gravy. What do Bibic say is wrong with it? They arn't fussy - they will eat anything else, just not potato!

Sacha I think it was something do with wheat staying in the digestive system for a long time.

Blossomhill - Annabel Karmel does a Family Meal Planner book - good everyday type cookery stuff in there. As with all AK, you need to be selective as some recipes are stupidly time consuming, but even allowing for that I use a good amount of the book. Best of all, almost every recipe in there is freezable so I always try to make double quantities and freeze half - then there's a quick meal the following week just by reheating something you've already got stored.

Actually, on reflection, I think freezing as much as you can so you have something quick in the freezer for "convenience" is the key...

I've recently done this too BH and I can give you the secret of avoiding processed food.....planning. That really is it. I plan the weeks' meals, shop for them and then make sure I get the appropriate meat/fish out of the freezer in the morning or the night before. People are absolutely right when they say it doesn't take any longer to cook a good meal from scratch than to put together turkey twizzlers and chips, but if you haven't defrosted the meat, you're a bit stuffed.

Anyway, ramble ramble, but it's worked for me (plus I do Internet shopping so am not tempted by bad things .

HTH

get a breadmaker - for about 2 mimnutes effort you get fresh bread every day which has less salt than bought bread.

The rest is just keep it simple - things like stews are very easy. Puddings such as fruit crumble are simple too.

Invest in a food processor, however small. Hummous takes 2 minutes. you could cook the chickpeas yourself, but why bother when tins are easy and cheap? Falafel are also a cheap and easy variation on the same theme.

Soup is incredibly easy to make when you get the hang of it. Put pearl barley and lentils into it and you can make a pot go an awfully long way.

I have made quite a change to our diet lately, prompted by the purchase of a breadmaker and a fabulous health food shop nearby. Originally I really got into making many seeded bread. I discovered that if you make something that is mostly seed and little bread, you only need one slice to fill you up. Now that I have seeds in the house always (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower, flax, carroway etc) I add them to leaves and whatever I have to hand to make salads which are eaten at every main meal. I have also been slowly exploring the various grains the health food shop has. Currently we are enjoying quinola and arminth (sp?) which take no longer to cook than potatoes. Sprouting is also fun for children to do and produces fairly instant and tasty results.

Learn how to make fritters. They take one egg, some milk and flour. to that you can add just about any leftover you can think of. (they are particularly nice with leftover curry). Again it's quick, easy enough for the children to help with and infinitly variable.

But in the end it comes down to practise. I was lucky, I grew up in New Zealand where most of our mothers still had the colonial attitude of making everything form scratch and eating seasonal. I would recommend the Edmonds cookbook (every Kiwi girl is issued one at birth) and the Australian Women's Weekly series.

Thank you so much for all of your helpful advice.

I really don't know how I'd cope without you lot >

I have changed to a processed free diet following Jamie, and the desire to calm my hyperactive child down. This is my third week. The last two weeks, we 'did' jamie, this week it's various. I have always kept nice sounding recipes out of magazines etc, and kept them in a scrapbook (and then never looked at them!), But have dug them out this week! I have spent the same or less at the supermarket, and eaten much better. I choose a weeks recipes, list the ingedients, and buy them. Some meals have had the '5 a day' in one go. I feel really pleased with myself too. I have also been trying to be good with ds lunchbox, using organic juice etc. I've tried to buy organic, but am cross it is expensive. I have noticed ds calmer since yesterday, not sure if is a coincidence, or if it's his diet kicking in.

by the way ds age 10 is moaning about piles of veg! ('whats this? I don't like it (wailing)...). Bought coriander for one recipe, but didn't go a bundle on it, so won't use it again!

Baked apples, if you can still eat sugar. Bramley apples - put in baking tin - take core out - fill resulting hole with sugar - bake at ?175 to 190 C for 30 mins.

Not much help probably but it's about the only cooked pudding I do on a regular basis.

I endorse the advice about planning ahead. I now try to decide what we will eat each day for the next week when I order the groceries. We don't always stick to the plan, but it does encourage us to eat a wider variety of foods. What made the biggest difference to our diet was the decision to get a box of organic veg delivered each week from Abel and Cole They tell you in advance what you will get, you can indicate likes and dislikes and they also have recipes for each kind of fruit and veg they deliver on their web site. This has broadened our diet a great deal. Even if you don't want to go down the organic route, you could use the recipes, but I think that it's the fact that someone else has chosen for us is what has weaned us off endlessly eating frozen peas. I also like the fact that our diet now changes with the seasons much more than it used to. Jane Grigson's 'Vegetable Book' is also useful for those moments when you have a Savoy Cabbage in the fridge and don't know what to do with it.

just had a look at that site, very interesting. How much is in the deluxe organic veg box? How many meals will it cook for instance. thanks. not bad price I didn't think - if there is enough in it.