Top tips from Menus4Mums for easy homecooked meals

Like Count On It labels, Menus4Mums aims to help busy families save time, money and get the most out of their food, by supplying family meal weekly menu planning and advice. Here's a great little article from them which shows how you can create easy, healthy and efficient family meals. Enjoy.

More and more parents are aware of the high salt and sugar levels in many processed foods and the danger they pose to their children’s development. That’s why so many would like to cook their families more home-made food, but it’s not always easy to fit into a busy lifestyle. At Menus4Mums we help busy parents ditch the takeaways and ready meals and serve up tasty, healthy food for their families, saving them time and money in the kitchen. So we thought we’d share our top tips:
Tip 1: Cook just one meal for the whole family. You can take out portions for small children before adding salt and strong spices, and you’ll be getting them used to the concept of eating the same as the rest of the family. You’ll also be saving on gas/electricity, not to mention your time.
Tip 2: Cook meals in bulk. We don’t mean in industrial sized quantities. But if you are making a Tomato Pasta Sauce, make twice or three times as much and freeze what you don’t need.*
Tip 3: Use Quick Cook Ingredients. For quick dinners when you’ve just got in the house, centre meals around diced chicken breast, mince, fish, pasta, noodles, and rice.
Tip 4: Slow Cook. Slow cookers are great for taking cheaper cuts of meat and turning them into succulent meals when you get in from work. They’re not just for stews – you can make a wonderfully tasty Bolognese Sauce in 5 hours in one.
For more tips and news of the latest supermarket bargains, please check out our website at www.menus4mums.co.uk
*Don't forget to stick on your Count On It label, so you'll remember exactly when you prepared them.

Britain's Got Talent judge, Amanda Holden can Count On It.

It is clear to see why Simon Cowell chose Amanda Holden to be one of the judges on the brilliant, Britain’s Got Talent. Not only is Amanda grounded in the real world, she also has got an eye for spotting a winner, as she proved when she gave the phenomenon that is, Susan Boyle, the thumbs up. Another winner Amanda has been quick to spot is Count On It® food freshness labels, the scratch-off label memory joggers that show when a product was first opened, stored or frozen.

Despite her life never been busier, mum to two-year-old Alexa and married to record producer, Chris Hughes, Amanda loves cooking for her daughter – but wants peace of mind when preparing her meals.

“These labels are fantastic – I put them on everything from pasta sauce to Alexa’s leftovers,” she said.

“I love giving Alexa fresh, wholesome food, but because of my busy lifestyle, I need to keep track of when I opened stuff – these labels do the job for me.”
Amanda also uses them for batch freezing. “Good nutritious food like fish pies and cottage pies can be made in advance and frozen, and these labels act as a check on when the food was first frozen – they are so simple to use but so effective, I’m beginning to wonder how I ever managed without them”.

Count On It® labels are on sale in Lakeland stores nationwide and are also available in Lakeland’s brochure and online at www.lakeland.co.uk. They are also available from www.count-on-it.co.uk

Lakeland’s Barbara Shepherd said: “Count On It® labels are one of a number of products we have introduced to help people reduce food wastage. We liked the no nonsense simplicity behind this product and how it can help people save money – foodies, mums and families will love it”.

For more ideas on how to get the best from your Count On It® labels visit www.count-on-it.co.uk

Another glowing endorsement - thanks Amy

I recently found this glowing endorsement from one of our lovely customers, Amy Lane on her blog, http://amylane.wordpress.com and thought I would share it with you, thanks Amy, I'm glad you like them.

How many of you have fridge full of half used jars of jams, pickles, sauces, salad dressings, mayonnaise etc. that you periodically get out, look at the label that says use within a month of opening, wrack your brains to remember when you opened it, and put it back deciding it’s best not to risk it? Then every few months have a clear out as you can’t fit anymore half used jars in there, wasting a load of food? Maybe you are all better organised than me, but up until a few months ago, this was definitely my routine!

Then I discovered ‘Count on it’ labels, bought a pack to try and now hardly ever waste food because I don’t know when I opened it. These little labels are brilliant - they have a surface that you can scratch off so you can record the day and month that you opened it (or if you are so inclined, the date it needs to be used by - man versus woman logic here!).

I use mine for all the jars in my fridge and also for leftover portions of food that I am freezing, my baking ingredients and home baked goodies destined for the freezer. As the surface can be scratched off in any place, I also scratch the initial of the child the food is for, as I often cook the baby food with less salt.

Another great thing about these labels is that they can be removed easily after use. I used to use plain labels and write on them with pen but they aren’t designed for this purpose and take a lot of scrubbing to remove them afterwards.

You can buy these great labels direct from the count on it website or from Lakeland and you can follow Lyndsey on twitter too.

Batch cooking + freezing + Count On It labels = save time, money & waste

It is great to hear on GMTV's news today and in the Telegraph, that the public are starting to realise that by batch cooking and freezing, not only are they saving themselves time, they are also making a significant difference to the amount of food they are wasting AND money they are saving. By managing our food better in this way, we always have food 'ready-to-go' and we are also improving our diet, as homecooking doesn't have all the additives that most prepared food contains.

In spite of this, it is still important to remember how long we have had food stored in our freezer, contrary to popular belief, freezing doesn't keep food indefinitely, for example cooked meat and casseroles should only be kept between 2 - 3 months. That is why it is important to be able to track how long food has been stored - that is where Count On It labels come in.

Versatile and easy to use, these scratch-off food freshness memory joggers tell you at a glance how long your food has been stored, so you will be able to track which food needs eating first, helping you manage your food efficiently and safely. www.count-on-it.co.uk

Here's the article that appears in today's Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/5119359/Batch-cooking-on-rise-as-families-save-money-in-kitchen.html