© 2010 Romilla Arber.
All rights reserved.
Web site by Crosspond.

I decided to write What’s for dinner? one Monday morning when confronted with the weekly problem of what I could muster from the kitchen to feed my family. I would go to the supermarket, buy various items, then go home and search through cookbooks to decide what to cook with these ingredients. I would then discover I was missing a certain ingredient and would have to go back to the supermarket.

I found myself shopping at least three times a week. Of course, I tried it the other way round, going through the cookbooks first and compiling a menu, but this took far too long; and either way I threw away unused food at the end of the week.

I realized that morning that planning a week’s food and shopping for it was a time consuming headache and a problem I resented. I should add that I live in a rural area, without a wide choice of local producers. I do purchase most of my meat from a local farm and grow as many vegetables as I can in my garden. I buy organic produce whenever I can, not because I believe it has magic qualities but because I think it tastes better and I know that more care has gone into its production. And I try to buy seasonal produce and am conscious of food miles when purchasing fruit and vegetables.

However, like most people, I also use supermarkets, both for convenience and because of the range of food available. In the depths of winter I am happy to buy fresh pineapple for my son, because it’s a fruit he loves and it’s good for him. In my opinion, life without supermarkets is a step too far. Denying yourself access to this convenience under the pressures of modern day living is unrealistic, making us slaves to a way of life that is impossible to sustain.

The purpose of What’s for dinner? is to help you plan, shop and prepare delicious, home-cooked meals without difficulty, increasing the chances of a healthy existence for you and your children. I think it is vitally important that people cook at home and in doing so teach their children to enjoy food. I hope that the advice and recipes I have included in What’s for dinner? will give confidence to those who need it, inspiration to those who lack it and the realization that by being a little more organized you can produce good tasty meals with the minimum of fuss.

Romilla Arber