Why the £1 chef should be everyone's NYE resolution


So my DH messed up my Christmas gift, and I’m actually not at all upset about it. 

I had recently heard about the £1 chef, Miguel Barclay with his cookbooks offering recipes that only cost £1 per person and I fell in love with this idea.  DH, in another life was a chef, and I’ve always enjoyed relaxing in the kitchen (I’m certainly not the kind of person that looks like her fridge is empty because I enjoy delicious food waaaaay too much).  Home cooking is hugely important to both of us and something we take great enjoyment from – in fact, when we packed up house to move countries, we had to get rid of well over 100 recipe books between us, far more than the average foodie household. 

We take home cooking very seriously.

DH is also the Minister of Finance and watches our budget like a hawk, and it’s a tight budget, so he walks a careful line every month, making sure we don’t spend frivolously.  So I thought, what a brilliant Christmas gift! The £1 chef presents a book that is both about cooking delicious food and also saves you money!  Thank you to online shopping, DH’s gift was delivered on 2 Oct and I was rather smug about it.

My birthday is just before Christmas and imagine my surprise, delight and dismay when I unwrapped all 3 of Miguel Barclay’s books!  We later worked out that DH’s order had arrived the very same day as mine…that’s couple goals for you.

So, with the festive madness over, I turned my attention to my new books and really started to review and consider what they offered me.  It’s safe to say that in just 2 days of burying my nose (and trying out some of the recipes), I’ve just become a superfan.

Miguel is nothing short of a genius and for a family that are still settling in our new country, his books offered me a lifeline that I desperately need right now.  What is so bloody amazing about meals for £1?  Let me tell you…

1. The food is delicious
The trouble with many recipe books is that the food makes a good photograph but necessarily a good meal.  I have a very long list of failed cooks, that were expensive and ended in the bin.  Add to that the fact that you can never scale the quantity correctly so you always end up with too much or too little food.  In the daily grind of life, all we really want is to eat well and not hassle about it.

2. The recipes are designed for one person
What can I say, this concept is absolutely legendary.  I’m a vegetarian, I live with meat eaters.  (Yes, I can hear your collective gasping, I'm a saffa that doesn't eat meat).  This means that every meal I cook for myself, I usually eat for 3 days straight, both lunch and dinner. Open up the £1 pound books and every single recipe is written as a single portion, which you can scale up as you need to – this caters for single people living alone, but also those like me, who eat differently to the rest of the family.  Add to that, with a busy family like ours, we never really know who is home for dinner, so we can decide how much to cook each night according the number of bodies in the house. 

3. No waste
Family goals...good food on a
budget and finding a purpose
for those left over ingredients
How many times have you thrown out half a bag of carrots or 2 potatoes, or the whole bunch of spring onions because they went funny?  How many times have you looked at those pork chops in the freezer and been so uninspired that you left them for another day?  How many times have you ended up eating pies and chips or buying a ready meal from Tescos because you just couldn’t be bothered to think of a meal or you don’t have all the ingredients on hand for meals you know are quick and easy to cook?  I currently have a pack of haloumi in my fridge, left over from a previous meal.  In the opening pages of Miguel’s books he tells you to look at the index of ingredients at the back of the book where you will find inspiration for where to use these random ingredients.  And just like that, I have meals planned for the haloumi, the half packet of spinach, the bag of carrots, the half pack of egg noodles which I can't even remember cooking with and also the chicken thighs that have been lurking in the freezer.  In a day and age where we really need to minimize our waste and (I believe) only buy what we will actually eat, the £1 chef has now given me a world of options for finishing off those half packs and random ingredients floating around my kitchen.


4. You don’t need a whole lot of time
I have a really high pressured job – I can't even manage to keep up with the washing in the week and I’ve fallen into a really bad habit of throwing unhealthy food at the family.  I’m just too damn tired to cook from scratch every night, and I’m not alone with this.  We all are tired, cranky, hungry and impatient to get to bed for some well deserved rest.  Having cooked from these books for 2 days straight, I have never been this relaxed in the kitchen.  We’ve tried at least 5 of the recipes so far and none of them have been time consuming or complicated at all – 20 mins and the family can sit down to eat.  What magic is this????

LOOK! It looks just like the picture in the book!
5. You don’t need fancy ingredient or tools
That speaks for itself – it’s a home cook’s dream.  Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to properly replicate the stylised photos on a recipe book?  Just watch "Nailed it" for a clue but I haven't yet not had my £1 meals look exactly as they do in the book.


6. It’s actually a bloody genius concept if you really think about it
This man should be a world leader.  This kind of genius can make the world a better place.  Actually it's made MY world a much better place and we've only just started.






7. I can manage my budget
I’ve actually tested this and yes, the meals cost £1 or less per head.  I’ll track this carefully across the next few weeks but I can already see that we will be able to control our food budget and predict our spending.  I’m dying to see if I lose weight with the controlled portion sizes and lovely fresh food too….I’ll let you know in a few months about that 😉

If you haven’t already figured it out, I’m absolutely smitten. 

You can follow Miguel’s Instagram page  @onepoundmeals or check out his website, but my honest advice is that you should invest in the books.  You most definitely won’t be sorry!

So thank you to the £1 chef for giving me the answer to a few endless struggles in my kitchen.  All we need now is a £1 picnic book to make planning our family outings a whole lot more fun!

Happy cooking!

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