A Week of Groceries around the World

A family from Bhutan with what they eat in a week

What would it look like if you got all the food that your family ate in a week - snacks, takeaway, the lot - and laid it out on your kitchen table. What would it look like? Lots of packets? Lots of veggies? Would one type of item dominate? Meat, bread or alcohol? Would there be a lot of food? Normally I would post a recipe on a Wednesday, but I found this photo essay that has just stopped me in my tracks.

3 ways to make a lunchbox more exciting

Are you the kind of mum that tries to make Lunchbox art each day?

Do you aim for something like this:

Checkout lunchboxawesome.com for more info!

I can't put on a show like this everyday, but here are a few ideas that bring smiles to the dials of my kids:

S(O)ULE food: Eating Local

You've probably heard the term 'Locavore' to describe someone who is determined to eat food sourced from within a 160 kilometre (100 mile) radius of their home. Some people are really hard-core about this definition. They insist that eating this way promotes health and prevents allergy. I don't know about that. I think that the most powerful arguments for eating as much local food as you can are environmental and economic. Reducing the 'food miles' of your food reduces the amount of CO2 spent to get the food to you and prioritising local food means that your money goes back into the local economy. I was interested to find this article about the malleability of the term (and on a related point -  I want that girl's job!).

7 Meals to Make and Freeze

It is such a relief to have a freezer that is full of meals that can be pulled out whenever I am home late or on weekends when I'd rather be having fun with the family than cooking. When I am cooking any kind of freezable meal, I usually do a double batch and freeze the excess in old takeaway containers. That way, not only does the freezer become my takeaway on busy nights, but I am also free to give these meals away to friends who need them. These are my favourite things to have in the freezer...

S(O)ULE Food: Unprocessed and Optionally Organic

Does your shopping list look like this:

Or this?

Unless you are a fruitarian or raw-foodist then all the food that you eat is processed to some extent. In fact as soon as you do anything to a raw ingredient, you are processing it - by peeling, chopping, cooking, adding flavouring etc. But it's healthiest to eat food that isn't processed within an inch of its life. Or at least, hasn't been processed into something unrecognisable to its original form. Some might call this a "whole" food diet. But I think the coolest way to explain it is this: If the food could think, it would remember where it came from.

Recipe: Easy Vegetable Curry

This recipe was born one night when I was alone, looking for hearty comfort food, but with very few fresh ingredients. It is one of those recipes where you can substitute pretty much every thing and still it turns out well. There's not a lot of curry paste so the flavour is mild enough for the kids. It is a one pot wonder - so less washing up!

7 ways to make one chicken breast fillet feed a family of four

I have one chicken breast fillet in the freezer left over from something else that I want to use in a family dinner. Instead of buying more meat I want to make this piece stretch. Obviously, the trick here is to cut up the chicken and use it as more of a flavouring in a dish with lots of veggies and other filling ingredients. Here things that have worked in the past: