How to find cooking and baking inspiration

What you need 

• a PC, Mac, tablet or smartphone  

• access to wifi  

• pens and a notebook 

• food storage containers 

 Top tips  

1Make a plan

Creating a schedule for your meals can help you to budget and know what you need to buy. There’s some existing inspiration for plans, such as: 

• one mum’s 2 week meal plan for 3 people that costs £70 

• the American Society of Nutrition’s advice to prepare you for food shopping  

• Recipe Tin Eats’ 15 day plan and supplies list 

2Consider food delivery

Getting a delivery could save you a trip to the supermarket and support local businesses. 

You can: 

• look for local delivery services in your area from independent stores  

• get same day delivery on your shop with Co-op Delivery (only available in selected areas) or via Co-op on Deliveroo  

3Think about how you store food

To make food last longer you can think about how it is stored. You could:  

• freeze food to cut down on waste  

• see where‘s best to store each food so that it lasts longer  

• see alternative options for food storage when you're low on refrigerator space 

4Grow your own

You might want to try growing your own food. You can:  

• regrow some vegetables indoors with just water and sunlight 

• grow your own food in small spaces 

5Check out recipes

These recipes might give you some inspiration: 

‘Finding inspiration’ recipes 

• from Co-op recipes 

• for Asian dishes, try Sanaas recipes 

• recipes from NewsHub for when you want to try something different 

Budget recipes 

• Cooking on a Bootstrap with Jack Monroe 

• recipes from a Foodbank cookbook 

• Skint Dad share their 20 favourite budget recipes 

Batch cooking recipes 

• BBC Food's section on batch cooking  

• big batch recipes on Bon Appetit 

• The Gousto Blog has vegetarian, vegan and meat batch dishes 

Store cupboard recipes 

• vegetarian simple meals from Anna Jones 

• back of cupboard meals that people are cooking around the world 

• Good Housekeeping recipes 

Healthy recipes 

• easy and healthy recipes from Shaw Academy 

• consider healthy foods  help to boost your immune system from Consumer News and Business Channel’s (CNBC) makeit website 

• try these healthy recipes and snacks from NHS Change4Life 

Baking recipes 

• there are recipes that would be fun to make with children 

• mug cakes allow you to make a sweet treat for one 

• try these 3-ingredient easy bakes  

• if you’re baking for others, try these recipes from Hello to give to neighbours or friends 

6Learn how to cook and bake

If you’d like to use this time to learn a new skill, there are plenty of cookery classes that will help:  

• Wagamama are running ‘Wok from Home’ cookery classes  

• Michelin star chef Luke Tipping is teaching his best dishes  

• BreadAHead are teaching us how to make bread 

• if you are keen to bake, check out The Big Bakes tutorials 

7Ask for help

If you need help getting food or paying for food during this time there is help available:  

• Co-op are offering support for food delivery  

• Access to Healthy Start are offering food vouchers 

Make sure you follow government guidelines on social distancing when using these services. 

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