Whether they’ve been chasing toddlers around all day or go to work, when it comes time to put the evening meal on, many women simple don’t feel like cooking. It is an effort to think straight when you are tired and have to make sure the laundry and the children’s homework is done, so you tend to choose the easiest recipes to cook, something that doesn’t have you measuring out 15 different ingredients and using 5 different pots to cook one single recipe. In fact, any recipe that includes more than 4 ingredients is banned from at least two busy people’s kitchens.
But even tired cooks still want to keep the family’s diet as healthy as possible. A recipe does not have to be complicated to be healthy. When you think about it, healthy food is not difficult to cook at all. In fact the healthiest food you can have is salad, which does not require any cooking and often, hardly any preparation apart from washing and slicing or grating. Not to mention, many salads can be bought already prepared.
However, it must be said that pasta and potato salads are not the healthiest of meals because of the Mayonnaise or salad dressing that accompanies it. Often, this is high in fat, sugar and sodium, making it a less desirable food, especially for those trying to lose weight.
Many people like to have dessert as part of the evening meal and while tinned fruit and ice-cream can be delightful treat on a warm evening, sometimes you feel like a home-cooked dessert. Home cooking is far superior in taste and usually in nutrients than anything bought fully cooked and frozen or packaged.
Here is a simple recipe for a desert that has – okay, six ingredients, but since it is so easy to prepare, that’s allowed. It is ideal for the busy mum.
Apple Cream Pie
Ingredients
- 1x425gm tin of sweetened apples or peaches, drained
- 2 tablespoons of plain flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 egg lightly beaten
- 200ml lite sour cream
- Cinnamon
Method: Place fruit in pie or casserole dish. Mix flour, sugar, egg and cream together until smooth. Pour over fruit and sprinkle lightly with cinnamon. Bake in a hot oven for 40 minutes.
Variations:
- Use mandarin segments for the fruit and add cocoa powder to the cream topping for a Jaffa effect.
- Use tinned fruit salad and add a tin of passionfruit to it. This can all be mixed in with the cream mixture or placed underneath as the apples are.
So you can see that by varying the ingredients you can have quite different tasting desserts that are all easy to do, and will quickly become favourites with the family.