Say No to Convenience Products

In matters of food and home, convenience can be expensive and quite often, unhealthy. A person working long hours can’t be expected to do everything from scratch all the time but here are some easy tips that I hope identify the main convenience culprits.

1. Avoid single serve portions. They are evil. Even if you are only feeding one, you are much better off investing in a good freezer and buying food in bulk, where cheaper. It is a simple habit to get into, and once you get into that mindset, it is hard to go back to paying premium prices for nicely packaged portions for one. Chopped plastic wrapped vegetables are the worst. The mark up for the convenience of having them peeled and chopped is astronomical. On a recent trip to Tesco, the normal celery head was 89c, where a bag of celery stalks, chopped from the base was €1.65. The actual size of the edible portion was about the same.

2. If the reason for buying smaller portions is to control weight, don’t be fooled by marketing ploys. Stay clear of low fat “weight watchers” products that claim to be healthier but are really just a smaller portion of the same food you could buy from any brand. Instead of buying your diet sliced pan, which is just reduced in size so the portion calorie count is smaller, learn how to make a decent brown bread and enjoy a full portion knowing that it is better for you. Better still; rise above the notion that low fat, processed products are a good way to control your weight. The healthiest, fittest people I know are those who eat well, enjoy their meat, carbohydrates, full fat dairy products, a daily treat and so on, but do not eat processed junk which often falsely parades itself as healthy. Belvita breakfast biscuits? Special K? No thanks; I’d rather have a boiled egg and brown bread. You can poach an egg in the microwave in less than a minute so limited time is no excuse.

3. Instead of buying packets of biscuits, bake your own. It is too easy to open a packet of supermarket biscuits and scoff five without even thinking. If you put in the time and effort to bake your own, not only are you getting physical exercise from the actual task of cooking and cleaning, but also you will appreciate them more and will be less quick to eat them so fast. Plus they defrost in no time so you can control your portions by freezing the batch and taking one out daily. It is more rewarding.

4. If you do not have a problem with eating sweet treats, just make a slab of chocolate biscuit cake every week and keep it in the fridge. I make a 6inch x 6inch x 1 inch portion once a week using a 125g bar of Lidl Madagascar chocolate [€1.25], 4 tbsp butter, 1 tbsp golden syrup, handful mixed dried fruit and 75g rich tea biscuits [you can buy a 300g pack for about 35c in Lidl]. It costs less that €2 to make and keeps two of us in chocolate for a week or more. If we were buying a chocolate bar a day for each of us in the local newsagent, we would be spending €2 every day - €14 a week!

5. Make a “rag bag”. Well make two – one for clean and one for dirty. Cut up any old clothes that have gone beyond wearable, store in a cotton bag and when used, put into a material net bag. The whole bag can be thrown into the washing machine with your usual load. You can stop buying paper towels and the by using the bag system, you’ll have a neat and tidy system.

For an ultra neat system, use plastic containers to contain the bags:

Uplifting homemade rags made from clothes!:

And don't get me started on take away teas and coffees..... If you have to have it on the go, buy a flask.