How to find cooking and baking inspiration
Last updated: 20 April, 2020
It’s important to think about cooking and what you will eat during lockdown to help you:
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
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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