Easy meals make the life of the working person so much easier. But just because they are easy does not mean to say they need to be uninviting.

The inexperienced cook does not realise how easy it is to turn a plain tasting dish into a very tasty dish and that is what the aim of our blog is. To show you how you can make easy meals, quick meals and all within a budget.

Having had years of experience in the catering industry and owned catering businesses I am aware of just how easy it is to turn a meal into a favourite.

What it does require is teh knowledge of how to use different herbs and spices and also how to use different cooking techniques to bring out the flavours.

I have always been a working mum and love being both, but sometimes the responsibility to both causes stress.

It was the fact that I wanted to continue with my work and spend time with my family that prompted me to search for recipes that could were quick and easy recipes.

Many years in the restaurant industry and food industry honed my skills and I also had the chance to observe from many experienced chefs.

Over time I want to share with you all the techniques I have learnt so that you soo can not only become a good cook, but one that can get an easy tasty meal on the table quickly.

Cooking for a family requires many skills, least of all making budget meals that will tempt the tastebuds of the family.

There is more to quick and easy recipes than just finding something that you can have on the table in 15 minutes.

Did you realise that food textures have a big influence on people’s tastes in foods.

Some people like to eat textured food like raw vegetables, salads, fresh fruit salads, whereas other people like to eat more creamy type foods like mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs and soups.

I neve realised just how important this was until I was reading about how small children who do not eat their food could be objecting to the texture rather than the food itself.

I know for a fact that I just cannot bear the thought of a slippery raw oyster slithering down my throat, but I just love cooked oysters with various sauces. Once I understood I looked at other foods and realise that it is the slushy,slippery type foods that I dislike as opposed to crunchier and textured food.

When cooking for the family it is also a good idea to see what type of food texture that they like because this will help when choosing your quick and easy food recipes for the family.

Experimenting with your cooking is great and don’t be afraid to swap one ingredient for another. When you are doing this, give thought to the type of flavour you are going to delete and the one that you are going to replace it with. There should always be a likeness, so to speak, about the flavour.

For example, with meat you can probably swap any meat, even cold meat and still end up with quite nice dish, but if you were going to swap meat with fish you are dealing with two quite different flavours and it would not be a good idea.

The same with swapping your vegetables, most will swap happily, but swapping say carrot with cabbage is going to give you an entirely different flavour.

I found when swapping as I was learning, that if you swap one ingredient you are pretty safe, given the examples above, but if you get into swapping too many you may be in trouble.

Learn your flavours and see what compliments each other and what will happily swap with others without changing the dish so much that it ruins the flavour.