http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/parenting/when-the-carrot-becomes-the-stick-2012918.html
When the carrot becomes the stick . . .
The problem of getting kids to eat what's good for them. By Susan Daly
Thursday January 14 2010
The news that 99pc of packed lunches are nutritionally unbalanced came as a stark statistic this week. Researchers at Leeds University in the UK found that crisps, sweets and sugary drinks take precedence over fruit, vegetables and dairy products in school children's lunchboxes.
That's bad enough in a country where half of all children can at least avail of nutritionally-sound school dinners. In Ireland, where school canteens don't exist, a healthy packed lunch is even more important.
"I wish some parents realised that," said one Montessori teacher at a Dublin inner city community crèche. "Based on what some of my kids come in with in the morning, I don't hold out much hope for them settling for an apple and a ham sandwich when they go to big school.
"Some of the parents give the kids sausage rolls from Centra on the way in. They promise them sweets to get them out of the house. It makes our job really difficult because they're cranky when the sugar buzz wears off."
Most primary schools in Ireland now offer healthy eating guidelines to parents and some impose strict regulations on children bringing junk food to school. The Department of Agriculture has been funding a healthy-eating programme in primary schools since 2007 called the Food Dudes. Michael Maloney from An Bord Bia, which runs the scheme, says it has been rolled out to 1,340 of the State's 3,500 primary schools so far. They supply fruit and veg for an initial 16 days, encouraging the children through a series of non-edible rewards to taste raw foods.
"In primary schools, you don't find vending machines but I know, anecdotally, they are available in some secondary schools, and if not, teenagers can go up the street and buy what they want in a shop," says Michael Maloney. "I know that certainly the earlier you can change children's behaviour and attitudes, the better.
"The programme was developed by Fergus Lowe, a psychologist, so it's all about changing behaviours. Children don't like to be different but because it's introduced from infants right up to sixth class, the whole culture changes."
Teenagers are a totally different kettle of battered fish. When I worked and lived in an affluent south Dublin suburb -- the type of place that knew its wholemeal pitta and hummus from its Tayto sandwiches -- the queue for the wedges counter in the local shop at school lunchtime was out the door.
This isn't just about teens having more disposable income. One adult acquaintance admitted to a teenage love of mayonnaise sandwiches while another said his schoolbag was a living organism by the end of each term from all the uneaten sandwiches.
Dr Muireann Cullen, manager of the Nutrition and Health Foundation, says that getting teens involved in what they bring to school is helpful. "There is no such thing as a bad food," she says, "If kids say they want X, Y and Z one day, it's alright to say, 'Fine, but tomorrow, we'll balance it out with these other foods', and explain why.
"Remember those mothers in the Jamie Oliver programme, pushing 'banned' foods through the school railings to their kids? That was about personal choice. Once everyone was included in the decision-making, that problem was taken away."
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
EveryMonday.ie
So-called silver surfers are pretty adept at doing their business on the web these days so kudos to Margaret Ward for catering to the over-55s with her everymonday.ie website which publishes fresh articles from experienced journalists every Monday. Please refer to a silver surfer near you!
Here are two of my recent posts on the site:
http://www.everymonday.ie/home_and_leisure/320-movies-for-the-young-at-heart.html
http://www.everymonday.ie/relationships/327-fun-yet-frugal-entertaining.html
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Make fudge, not war
Now when I say cooking is better than sex, I mean in an EVOLUTIONARY sense. Allegedly.
From today's Indo...
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/why-cooking-is-better-than-sex-1912427.html
Why cooking is better than sex. . .
A new book claims it's what happens in the kitchen -- not the bedroom -- that has made humanity evolve. Susan Daly reports
By Susan Daly
Wednesday October 14 2009
A survey of women last year declared that chocolate was better than sex. A victorious sports captain might describe winning as better than sex. For sleep-deprived new parents, eight hours of kip can be better than ... You get the idea.
Indeed, sex might not be the force that binds men and women together. According to a Harvard anthropologist, the main shaping force of human social behaviour is: cooking.
Richard Wrangham, in his new book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, says that the turning point in our evolution into modern men and women came when we first thought of throwing a bit of meat on the fire.
Archaeology normally dates the birth of cooking back to 200,000 BC when the first evidence of charred bones and hearths appeared. Wrangham, however, goes back 1.9 million years to find what he says is the point at which humans started to perform rudimentary cooking.
It is that moment at which our ancestors' bodies evolved into Homo erectus, with smaller digestive systems, jaws and teeth and bigger brains. The reason for these changes, says Wrangham, is that we had learned to break food down by cooking it, freeing up all that energy previously used chewing and digesting to increase our brain power.
There might be something in this. Nutritionist Aveen Bannon says that a raw-food diet -- although somewhat in vogue these days -- can be a very difficult one in which to balance all your energy and nutritional needs.
"It can be phenomenally high in fibre, and so takes a lot of digestive work," she says. Indeed, chimps spend around six hours a day chewing their raw foodstuffs into submission.
"It takes lots of planning and dedication to make sure that you are getting all the calcium, iron, vitamins and minerals that you need from such a diet."
A famous research project called the Giessen Raw Food Study found that a raw-food diet can't "guarantee an adequate energy supply".
The release of energy from raw food takes a lot longer to permeate the human body than cooked food, says Bannon.
There is no doubting that cooking food freed up time and energy for our ancestors to evolve. More controversial is Wrangham's contention that the first human 'marriages' were about food, not sex. The discovery of cooking, he says, led to relationships between the sexes that were "primitive protection rackets".
Men protected women from animals and other creatures attracted by the light and smell of the cooking fire. Women in return slaved for them over a hot cooking pit.
Is this the real truth behind the old chestnut, 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach'?
"Over the past decades we have understood that our social system comes through the competition for reproductive partners," Wrangham says. "I'm saying, pair bonds are firstly about food, and that gave a platform to develop those relationships further."
Dr Abdullahai El Tom of the Department of Anthropology in NUI Maynooth, is an expert in the anthropology of food. He agrees that cooking food helped advance society by widening the choice of what was edible.
"But it was not the foundation of society," he insists. "It makes a wonderful story but it should be seen more as an addition, among many other things, to human society as it evolved over time."
As for the assumption that women were immediately chained to the primitive stove, Dr El Tom is not convinced.
"The original cook would not have used tools at all, it would have been very simply cooking by roasting and I don't know how he could prove that women had to do it." In fact, he points out mischievously, "look at the barbecue in summer, you will find men dominating them still."
However, food is still a major part of how we construct our social selves. Dr El Tom believes how we eat is as important to our sense of identity as how we dress. Food is very indicative today of where we are headed.
'Society is becoming more individualistic and our use of food asserts that," says Dr El Tom. "The communal stage, where families mostly sat down to dinner together, is coming to an end. There is a transformation in the way we approach food, even down to the family that sits together but serves three or four different meals at the one table."
Where food used to augment the family relationship, it is now more likely to be a cohesive force among friends (the new family?) or to impress your status by meeting at a particular restaurant.
Yet the romantic dinner survives as a cultural motif. Cooking for someone for the first time can be a very intimate gesture. This might hold an echo back to a time when it really mattered to a husband that he could come home to a meal cooked by his wife.
But be warned, gentlemen, women have evolved to the point where they no longer desire to be the only ape in the kitchen.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/fifty-ways-to-feed-your-lover-1912426.html
Wednesday October 14 2009
Richard Wrangham contests that cooking, not sex, was the initial binding force between humans. Whatever the truth of why our ancestors paired off, the twin imperatives of food and sex have become culturally intertwined.
Oysters, chocolate and asparagus are a byword for sensual pleasure. This menu, drawn from the chefs at www.eatsomethingsexy.com, suggests a few new ways to your partner's heart ...
STARTER: Spicy garlic shrimp
Why? The ancient Greeks used to feed garlic to Olympians because it was purported to improve stamina. Scientists have recently found that the chemical substance behind the distinctive whiff of garlic, far from being a turn-off, is also present in female sexual secretions.
Ingredients: 400g peeled shrimp; 5 tbsp olive oil; 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes; 3 cloves garlic, crushed; sea salt.
Method: 1. Add the pepper flakes and garlic to the olive oil and leave to infuse for an hour.
2. Heat oil in large skillet on medium-high heat, adding shrimp and cooking 2 mins each side.
3. Season and serve on crusty French bread.
MAIN: Wild mushroom risotto with seared scallops
Why? Often overlooked by romantics in favour of the oyster, scallops are high in phosphorus and iodine. Iodine deficiency has been documented as reducing sex drive. Mushrooms are lauded by several South Pacific cultures for their aphrodisiacal qualities on women.
Ingredients: Two tbsp olive oil; 400g scallops, crescent-shaped muscles discarded; salt and pepper; 1 shallot, minced; 1 garlic clove, minced; 200g assorted mushrooms; 1 tbsp thyme leaves; 1 tbsp chopped parsley; 2 bay leaves; 1 cup arborio rice; half-cup dry white wine; 4 cups chicken stock, heated; 1 tbsp butter; handful grated parmesan cheese.
Method: 1. On medium heat, cook the shallot and garlic in 1tbsp oil in large, deep skillet, stirring for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and herbs and cook for about 10 minutes. Season.
2. Add the rice and stir 2 minutes to coat with the oil; the grains will turn opaque. Season again. Stir in wine and cook 1 minute.
3. Pour in 1 cup of the warm stock and stir until the rice has absorbed the liquid. Stir constantly and add stock, 1 cup at a time, until rice has absorbed all liquid.
4. Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper and brown on another pan over medium-high with 1tbsp oil. Remove after 2 minutes.
5. When risotto is cooked, fold in the butter and cheese, top with the scallops and drizzle with olive oil. Serve hot.
DESSERT: Bananas in hot fudge
Why? It's all about the banana. Potassium and B vitamins are bananas' gift to healthy sex hormone production. The banana is an important aphrodisiac in Central America and India (where it is offered as a gift to the fertility gods) and in Islam, the banana, not the apple, was the forbidden fruit in Eden.
Ingredients: 2 bananas; 375g condensed milk; 450g castor sugar; 100g softened butter; 1tsp vanilla extract
Method: 1. Freeze the peeled bananas overnight.
2. Put butter in saucepan over medium heat. As it melts, add condensed milk, sugar and vanilla extract.
3. Gently stir the mixture around until the sugar dissolves. Still stirring, bring the mixture to a rolling boil and then turn down the heat.
4. Keep cooking the fudge mixture while stirring at low heat (8-10 mins). Do not stop stirring or it will caramelise too quickly.
5. Serve lengthway slices of the frozen banana to dip into the still-liquid hot fudge.
From today's Indo...
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/why-cooking-is-better-than-sex-1912427.html
Why cooking is better than sex. . .
A new book claims it's what happens in the kitchen -- not the bedroom -- that has made humanity evolve. Susan Daly reports
By Susan Daly
Wednesday October 14 2009
A survey of women last year declared that chocolate was better than sex. A victorious sports captain might describe winning as better than sex. For sleep-deprived new parents, eight hours of kip can be better than ... You get the idea.
Indeed, sex might not be the force that binds men and women together. According to a Harvard anthropologist, the main shaping force of human social behaviour is: cooking.
Richard Wrangham, in his new book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, says that the turning point in our evolution into modern men and women came when we first thought of throwing a bit of meat on the fire.
Archaeology normally dates the birth of cooking back to 200,000 BC when the first evidence of charred bones and hearths appeared. Wrangham, however, goes back 1.9 million years to find what he says is the point at which humans started to perform rudimentary cooking.
It is that moment at which our ancestors' bodies evolved into Homo erectus, with smaller digestive systems, jaws and teeth and bigger brains. The reason for these changes, says Wrangham, is that we had learned to break food down by cooking it, freeing up all that energy previously used chewing and digesting to increase our brain power.
There might be something in this. Nutritionist Aveen Bannon says that a raw-food diet -- although somewhat in vogue these days -- can be a very difficult one in which to balance all your energy and nutritional needs.
"It can be phenomenally high in fibre, and so takes a lot of digestive work," she says. Indeed, chimps spend around six hours a day chewing their raw foodstuffs into submission.
"It takes lots of planning and dedication to make sure that you are getting all the calcium, iron, vitamins and minerals that you need from such a diet."
A famous research project called the Giessen Raw Food Study found that a raw-food diet can't "guarantee an adequate energy supply".
The release of energy from raw food takes a lot longer to permeate the human body than cooked food, says Bannon.
There is no doubting that cooking food freed up time and energy for our ancestors to evolve. More controversial is Wrangham's contention that the first human 'marriages' were about food, not sex. The discovery of cooking, he says, led to relationships between the sexes that were "primitive protection rackets".
Men protected women from animals and other creatures attracted by the light and smell of the cooking fire. Women in return slaved for them over a hot cooking pit.
Is this the real truth behind the old chestnut, 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach'?
"Over the past decades we have understood that our social system comes through the competition for reproductive partners," Wrangham says. "I'm saying, pair bonds are firstly about food, and that gave a platform to develop those relationships further."
Dr Abdullahai El Tom of the Department of Anthropology in NUI Maynooth, is an expert in the anthropology of food. He agrees that cooking food helped advance society by widening the choice of what was edible.
"But it was not the foundation of society," he insists. "It makes a wonderful story but it should be seen more as an addition, among many other things, to human society as it evolved over time."
As for the assumption that women were immediately chained to the primitive stove, Dr El Tom is not convinced.
"The original cook would not have used tools at all, it would have been very simply cooking by roasting and I don't know how he could prove that women had to do it." In fact, he points out mischievously, "look at the barbecue in summer, you will find men dominating them still."
However, food is still a major part of how we construct our social selves. Dr El Tom believes how we eat is as important to our sense of identity as how we dress. Food is very indicative today of where we are headed.
'Society is becoming more individualistic and our use of food asserts that," says Dr El Tom. "The communal stage, where families mostly sat down to dinner together, is coming to an end. There is a transformation in the way we approach food, even down to the family that sits together but serves three or four different meals at the one table."
Where food used to augment the family relationship, it is now more likely to be a cohesive force among friends (the new family?) or to impress your status by meeting at a particular restaurant.
Yet the romantic dinner survives as a cultural motif. Cooking for someone for the first time can be a very intimate gesture. This might hold an echo back to a time when it really mattered to a husband that he could come home to a meal cooked by his wife.
But be warned, gentlemen, women have evolved to the point where they no longer desire to be the only ape in the kitchen.
http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/fifty-ways-to-feed-your-lover-1912426.html
Wednesday October 14 2009
Richard Wrangham contests that cooking, not sex, was the initial binding force between humans. Whatever the truth of why our ancestors paired off, the twin imperatives of food and sex have become culturally intertwined.
Oysters, chocolate and asparagus are a byword for sensual pleasure. This menu, drawn from the chefs at www.eatsomethingsexy.com, suggests a few new ways to your partner's heart ...
STARTER: Spicy garlic shrimp
Why? The ancient Greeks used to feed garlic to Olympians because it was purported to improve stamina. Scientists have recently found that the chemical substance behind the distinctive whiff of garlic, far from being a turn-off, is also present in female sexual secretions.
Ingredients: 400g peeled shrimp; 5 tbsp olive oil; 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes; 3 cloves garlic, crushed; sea salt.
Method: 1. Add the pepper flakes and garlic to the olive oil and leave to infuse for an hour.
2. Heat oil in large skillet on medium-high heat, adding shrimp and cooking 2 mins each side.
3. Season and serve on crusty French bread.
MAIN: Wild mushroom risotto with seared scallops
Why? Often overlooked by romantics in favour of the oyster, scallops are high in phosphorus and iodine. Iodine deficiency has been documented as reducing sex drive. Mushrooms are lauded by several South Pacific cultures for their aphrodisiacal qualities on women.
Ingredients: Two tbsp olive oil; 400g scallops, crescent-shaped muscles discarded; salt and pepper; 1 shallot, minced; 1 garlic clove, minced; 200g assorted mushrooms; 1 tbsp thyme leaves; 1 tbsp chopped parsley; 2 bay leaves; 1 cup arborio rice; half-cup dry white wine; 4 cups chicken stock, heated; 1 tbsp butter; handful grated parmesan cheese.
Method: 1. On medium heat, cook the shallot and garlic in 1tbsp oil in large, deep skillet, stirring for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and herbs and cook for about 10 minutes. Season.
2. Add the rice and stir 2 minutes to coat with the oil; the grains will turn opaque. Season again. Stir in wine and cook 1 minute.
3. Pour in 1 cup of the warm stock and stir until the rice has absorbed the liquid. Stir constantly and add stock, 1 cup at a time, until rice has absorbed all liquid.
4. Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper and brown on another pan over medium-high with 1tbsp oil. Remove after 2 minutes.
5. When risotto is cooked, fold in the butter and cheese, top with the scallops and drizzle with olive oil. Serve hot.
DESSERT: Bananas in hot fudge
Why? It's all about the banana. Potassium and B vitamins are bananas' gift to healthy sex hormone production. The banana is an important aphrodisiac in Central America and India (where it is offered as a gift to the fertility gods) and in Islam, the banana, not the apple, was the forbidden fruit in Eden.
Ingredients: 2 bananas; 375g condensed milk; 450g castor sugar; 100g softened butter; 1tsp vanilla extract
Method: 1. Freeze the peeled bananas overnight.
2. Put butter in saucepan over medium heat. As it melts, add condensed milk, sugar and vanilla extract.
3. Gently stir the mixture around until the sugar dissolves. Still stirring, bring the mixture to a rolling boil and then turn down the heat.
4. Keep cooking the fudge mixture while stirring at low heat (8-10 mins). Do not stop stirring or it will caramelise too quickly.
5. Serve lengthway slices of the frozen banana to dip into the still-liquid hot fudge.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The credit munch
The number of calls I got from radio stations looking to get in touch with the woman I interview in the article below is a pretty strong indication of what people are obsessing over at the moment. (Money, or the lack of it). Or, it could be that we media are obsessed with the idea that it's what people want to hear...
Here it is anyway - from Tuesday's Indo: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/how-i-can-feed-a-family-of-five-on-less--than-8364100-a-week-1862244.html
How I can feed a family of five on less than €100 a week
This mum knows how to plan ahead, writes Susan Daly
Tuesday August 18 2009
Cooking has become a spectator sport. At a time when we are being advised to cook purse-friendly meals at home to beat the pinch, celebrity chefs are still crowding our TV screens.
Even Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep has gotten in on the act, with her turn as Julia Childs in new movie Julie and Julia. Childs was a TV chef credited with popularising sophisticated French cooking among convenience food-obsessed Americans of the 1960s.
Food campaigner Michael Pollan has pointed out it is ironic that Streep resurrects Childs' achievements at a time when the art of home cooking has almost died out.
"How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen, but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" he asked.
Other foodies are taking a more constructive attitude to the loss of cooking skills. The BBC has begun a new series called Economy Gastronomy (BBC2, Wednesdays, 8pm). The aim of the series is to show families how to assemble simple, nourishing dishes using good-quality, affordable ingredients. Waste nothing is the key phrase.
Yvonne Rosenkrantz, who runs a cookery school for children from her house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, is a keen advocate of cheap and healthy family cooking. She and her husband have a 12-year-old son, Caelum. They also take in Spanish students for the summer. Here Yvonne makes a menu she would use to keep her food bill under €100, feeding 4 to 5.
BREAKFAST:
"Porridge is my cupboard staple, nutritious and cheap. I sometimes make pancakes using brown flour and if you make muffins, they can be used again for lunch. Once a week, we might have a special breakfast, honey, yoghurts, small Canadian pancakes -- it's not much effort and it breaks up the rest of the week."
LUNCH:
"Half-brown and half-white bread sandwiches cost no more than usual but look more interesting to kids. It doesn't blow the budget to use little pitta breads from time to time. I toast them, fill them with leftover chicken and wrap in foil. I empty a fruit yoghurt into a bigger spill-proof cup and add chopped fruit. Homemade fruit cake is a big hit with us, as are homemade crisps -- just throw some thinly sliced root veg on a roasting tray with olive oil and a pinch of salt."
TREATS:
"Fizzy drinks are a waste of money. I keep squash concentrates like Robinson's, where a little goes a long way when diluted with water. Kids get used to what they are given. I make a batch of flapjack bars at the start of the week and keep in an airtight container. They are a doddle and full of things in your cupboard; nuts, oats, honey, seeds."
EVENING MEALS:
MONDAY:
"It's normally a roast on Sunday so I make a white sauce, add mushrooms and the leftover chicken to pasta for an easy carbonara.
Chicken pies are good too -- puff pastry is tricky to make so I don't mind buying frozen. It's only an expensive option when people roll it out too thickly. I get 14 squares (one square per little pie) out of one roll of pastry. It's only really a cover for the pie. Leftover pies can be kept frozen."
TUESDAY:
"I never buy vegetables on a Monday because most fresh ingredients don't go into the shops until Monday evening. Do a shop then if you can because your veg will last much longer at home. It's a mince day today. Irish people tend to use too much meat in our mince dishes like spaghetti bolognese, so I would bulk up the veg content with celery, onion and garlic and stretch the mince over two days, maybe to a lasagne."
WEDNESDAY:
"The other half of the mince is gorgeous in tortilla wraps -- kids always love this meal. Use the same spag bol sauce, stuff your wraps, top off with a little cheese in the oven and it's just divine. I give the mix an edge with different spices I keep in the store cupboard."
THURSDAY:
"If my son has had meat at lunch, I would maybe use up eggs in a Spanish omelette. You can throw anything into it you want so that nothing goes to waste at the bottom of the fridge -- potatoes, onions, bits of rashers, carrots, and so on."
FRIDAY:
"Salmon is expensive but there are lots of cheap fish out there. I like hoki, which is very good value and has no bones, so it's great for family meals. I make homemade fish and chips by cutting the fish fillets into strips, rolling them in flour, egg and breadcrumbs (or I use up stale cream crackers by crumbling them up very finely) and frying.
"Forget bags of oven chips -- it only takes a minute to scrub a few spuds, chop them in eighths, toss in olive oil and mixed herbs, roast, and you have lovely potato wedges."
SATURDAY:
"Instead of a takeaway, there is a simple sweet and sour chow mein that I get kids making from the age of four up. You stir fry chicken and whatever veg you have -- frozen or fresh, I always have a bag of peas in the freezer.
"For the sauce, mix a tablespoon of runny honey, garlic and ginger, 2tbs soy sauce, juice of half an orange, 1tsp of cornflour, and a little chicken stock and toss everything in it before cooking. It's a cheat Chinese. I really begrudge paying €40 or €50 a head to eat out these days."
SUNDAY:
"Generally, I have potatoes left over for the roast so this is just the price of a good chicken or meat joint, and a few veg."
For information on courses at Yvonne's Junior Chef cookery school, visit www.juniorchef.ie or ring 01 2780382.
Here it is anyway - from Tuesday's Indo: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/food-drink/how-i-can-feed-a-family-of-five-on-less--than-8364100-a-week-1862244.html
How I can feed a family of five on less than €100 a week
This mum knows how to plan ahead, writes Susan Daly
Tuesday August 18 2009
Cooking has become a spectator sport. At a time when we are being advised to cook purse-friendly meals at home to beat the pinch, celebrity chefs are still crowding our TV screens.
Even Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep has gotten in on the act, with her turn as Julia Childs in new movie Julie and Julia. Childs was a TV chef credited with popularising sophisticated French cooking among convenience food-obsessed Americans of the 1960s.
Food campaigner Michael Pollan has pointed out it is ironic that Streep resurrects Childs' achievements at a time when the art of home cooking has almost died out.
"How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen, but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?" he asked.
Other foodies are taking a more constructive attitude to the loss of cooking skills. The BBC has begun a new series called Economy Gastronomy (BBC2, Wednesdays, 8pm). The aim of the series is to show families how to assemble simple, nourishing dishes using good-quality, affordable ingredients. Waste nothing is the key phrase.
Yvonne Rosenkrantz, who runs a cookery school for children from her house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, is a keen advocate of cheap and healthy family cooking. She and her husband have a 12-year-old son, Caelum. They also take in Spanish students for the summer. Here Yvonne makes a menu she would use to keep her food bill under €100, feeding 4 to 5.
BREAKFAST:
"Porridge is my cupboard staple, nutritious and cheap. I sometimes make pancakes using brown flour and if you make muffins, they can be used again for lunch. Once a week, we might have a special breakfast, honey, yoghurts, small Canadian pancakes -- it's not much effort and it breaks up the rest of the week."
LUNCH:
"Half-brown and half-white bread sandwiches cost no more than usual but look more interesting to kids. It doesn't blow the budget to use little pitta breads from time to time. I toast them, fill them with leftover chicken and wrap in foil. I empty a fruit yoghurt into a bigger spill-proof cup and add chopped fruit. Homemade fruit cake is a big hit with us, as are homemade crisps -- just throw some thinly sliced root veg on a roasting tray with olive oil and a pinch of salt."
TREATS:
"Fizzy drinks are a waste of money. I keep squash concentrates like Robinson's, where a little goes a long way when diluted with water. Kids get used to what they are given. I make a batch of flapjack bars at the start of the week and keep in an airtight container. They are a doddle and full of things in your cupboard; nuts, oats, honey, seeds."
EVENING MEALS:
MONDAY:
"It's normally a roast on Sunday so I make a white sauce, add mushrooms and the leftover chicken to pasta for an easy carbonara.
Chicken pies are good too -- puff pastry is tricky to make so I don't mind buying frozen. It's only an expensive option when people roll it out too thickly. I get 14 squares (one square per little pie) out of one roll of pastry. It's only really a cover for the pie. Leftover pies can be kept frozen."
TUESDAY:
"I never buy vegetables on a Monday because most fresh ingredients don't go into the shops until Monday evening. Do a shop then if you can because your veg will last much longer at home. It's a mince day today. Irish people tend to use too much meat in our mince dishes like spaghetti bolognese, so I would bulk up the veg content with celery, onion and garlic and stretch the mince over two days, maybe to a lasagne."
WEDNESDAY:
"The other half of the mince is gorgeous in tortilla wraps -- kids always love this meal. Use the same spag bol sauce, stuff your wraps, top off with a little cheese in the oven and it's just divine. I give the mix an edge with different spices I keep in the store cupboard."
THURSDAY:
"If my son has had meat at lunch, I would maybe use up eggs in a Spanish omelette. You can throw anything into it you want so that nothing goes to waste at the bottom of the fridge -- potatoes, onions, bits of rashers, carrots, and so on."
FRIDAY:
"Salmon is expensive but there are lots of cheap fish out there. I like hoki, which is very good value and has no bones, so it's great for family meals. I make homemade fish and chips by cutting the fish fillets into strips, rolling them in flour, egg and breadcrumbs (or I use up stale cream crackers by crumbling them up very finely) and frying.
"Forget bags of oven chips -- it only takes a minute to scrub a few spuds, chop them in eighths, toss in olive oil and mixed herbs, roast, and you have lovely potato wedges."
SATURDAY:
"Instead of a takeaway, there is a simple sweet and sour chow mein that I get kids making from the age of four up. You stir fry chicken and whatever veg you have -- frozen or fresh, I always have a bag of peas in the freezer.
"For the sauce, mix a tablespoon of runny honey, garlic and ginger, 2tbs soy sauce, juice of half an orange, 1tsp of cornflour, and a little chicken stock and toss everything in it before cooking. It's a cheat Chinese. I really begrudge paying €40 or €50 a head to eat out these days."
SUNDAY:
"Generally, I have potatoes left over for the roast so this is just the price of a good chicken or meat joint, and a few veg."
For information on courses at Yvonne's Junior Chef cookery school, visit www.juniorchef.ie or ring 01 2780382.
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