“Most of all its about gaining back time and headspace”
The Batch Lady is based around the concept of batch cooking but in a whole new, modern way. It’s about time saving, creating fast simple homemade meals that can be made in advance and frozen for those busy weekday evenings. It combines recipes that we all use with new ideas that are easy to make.
Who knew that when we grow up, one of the most tedious things we would have to do is decide what to cook each night for dinner? When it was just my husband and I it was bearable but as our family grew, it just became more complicated.
After years of standing at the school gate and realising the topic of conversation often revolved around cooking dinner – What to have? What ingredients did we have in? Did we need to stop at the shop? – I realised that I needed to take the time management skills I used for work and convert them into making meals in advance. I would cook one morning a week and freeze everything ready for the week ahead. I loved it, we were organised, eating good food, saving time, and saving money.
It was a win-win. Then friends kept asking me if I would show them some freezable quick recipe ideas and how I stored everything and, voila, The Batch Lady was born.
The Batch Lady offers something very new; the concept that if you are going to make one meal you can actually save time by making a similar meal at the same time. So the recipes in the book are twinned to demonstrate alternate options; for example, savoury calzone OR sweet calzone. It offers suggestions on ‘zhuzhing up’ meals, so you make one basic recipe that will feed the kids yet save a portion that can be ‘zhuzhed up’ for adults. Many of the recipes also offer different ways to serve the same meal, so readers get the benefit of learning only one new recipe but using it for three separate meals as they serve it up in different ways.
This book is really about helping people regain time, be organised, produce less food waste and save money. But most of all its about gaining back time and headspace. No matter how much we all love cooking, doing it every night quickly becomes a chore. This book enables readers to eat delicious food but to control how, what and when they cook, rather than living a life dictated by mealtimes.
– Suzanne Mulholland
Resources
The Batch Lady
Suzanne Mulholland
Out Now
£20 HB
9780008373221
