Here's the thing: Autumn Planning Continued

Food should be a pleasure – it should make you happy – especially when the weather changes into Autumn and we demand comfort and warmth from our food.

The trouble is we live our lives at warp speed – constantly chasing our tails, juggling balls, whatever the description they mean the same. There are not enough hours in a day and it's so easy to resort to the ding of the microwave and a processed meal or rely on takeaways.

Please don't think that I'm being a pain in the posterior – everyone indulges in one or the other or indeed both, from time to time.

We don't have the time to cook from scratch every day.

I know I'm repeating myself - make the best use of your kitchen when you are in it, using the “whilst I'm at it, I might as well” principle. If you've read “Autumn Planning” then so far you're able to produce the following :

Whatever you cooked on Sunday, which

gave you leftover veggies

A vegetable bake using the leftovers, covered

in an Alfredo sauce finished with 3p topping

Stuff the baked jacket potatoes – add chopped chicken

to the leftover vegetables and the Alfredo sauce

Fish Pie – two alternatives

Slow roasted chicken – so far three choices

more to follow

That's Sunday through to Thursday so far -and we haven't scratched the surface yet. Another thing – you might want to make sure your BFF contains a couple puff pastry sheets, or, these days you can buy frozen rolled pizza bases too. Both are excellent products and for speedy “working week” food you'll find them invaluable.

As an example :

How about Friday night is pizza night – your own – sort of. All you have to remember is to take the base out of the freezer.

Pizza bianca

Use leftover cold Alfredo sauce, spread on a pizza base, add mushrooms, black olives and Italian meats of your choice – or diced chicken

Sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan and ditto of oregano and bake

in a preheated oven at 180fan/200c/Gas 6 for 20 minutes until hot and bubbling

This pizza takes no longer to assemble than the telephone call to the takeaway and infinitely cheaper and, take my word for it, tastes great.

I've just realised that it's academic since you've deleted the takeaway delivery number anyway – tee hee!