Too busy to cook a healthy dinner? Then let us slave over a hot stove instead

8:54am Friday 18th July 2008

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YOU get home late from a long hard day at work, your boss has been on your back and the last thing you want to do is cook.

So you pick up the takeaway leaflet and order the pizza, the curry, or whatever else takes your fancy that night.

But isn’t this all depressingly familiar?

Didn’t you do this exact same thing last week, or even last night?

Unfortunately, these days many of us are just too busy to cook and find ourselves dialling for take-out because it’s quick and easy, even though we know it isn’t exactly the healthy option.

So what if you could get a cooked meal that tastes like you just made it yourself, like braised steak with vegetables and gravy, a chicken and mushroom pie or vegetarian chilli?

Caterer Judith Hibbert had the same thought while chatting with her hairdresser when she struck upon the simple solution to do just that – provide freshly-prepared home cooked meals daily.

She opened County Cuisine, in Sidbury, Worcester, six weeks ago initially offering cooked breakfasts, sandwiches, hot meals and homemade cake but advertising her ‘supper service’.

Judith said: “It came from a conversation with my hairdresser who has to work late and said she would love to pick up something fresh and now that is exactly what we do.”

She believes her service is a first for Worcester where the meals can be ordered, freshly made and picked up the same day – all without breaking the bank.

Judith said: “There’s no freezing involved, I make it all here to order. “We did some leafleting before we even opened and then I had people asking me when it was going to start so it has been building up from word of mouth since we started.”

Shop customers can order their supper from three daily specials before 2pm which are then prepared from fresh ingredients and can be picked up between 4pm and 6pm.

There is always a meat and vegetarian option and particular dietary needs are catered for.

Judith, aged 47, is a married mother-of-two and knows how tough it can be to hold down a full-time job and find time to cook.

Working as a local authority housing manager and driving 3,000 miles a week it was a constant struggle to prepare a decent meal until Judith gave it all up to run her business. She explained: “I think it’s been building for a while.

“With the modern time pressures on life the thing that tends to get the least attention is ‘what’s for tea?’ “If you have to pick up the kids from school, take them to social events then cooking tea is right at the bottom of the list.”

She also pointed out the traditional image of stay-at-home mothers cooking a family dinner no longer existed in many households.

Many of her customers are also pensioners who live alone and don’t have the mobility to prepare a decent hot meal. Judith explained with meals-on-wheels service cuts and the ever-diminishing number of community lunch clubs more elderly people were struggling to find good food on a pension.

At What’s Cooking, in Mealcheapen Street, Worcester, owner Andy Clayton agrees the traditional takeaway service is filling a gap in the market for people without the time or means to cook themselves.

He explained: “With society now everything costs so much and for example to make a curry you need about 20 ingredients. You see all these recipes in the cookbooks and by time you’ve got everything you need its costs £40 when you’re only going to make it once.”

With 24 years’ experience cooking including running a 400-plate restaurant at Birmingham’s NEC, Mr Clayton has the means to produce a lengthy takeaway menu including fish cakes, pork and apple casserole and lasagne.

Everything is prepared fresh in the shop with meat sourced from local suppliers including Jeynes Butchers, in Lowesmoor, and seasonal vegetables sourced from Evesham and Birmingham market.

Customers include gym members with special dietary needs, elderly people, office workers and larger commercial orders.

He added: “Since the end of last year we’ve even been cooking for people flooded out in last summer’s storms who still don’t have a cooker.”

Mr Clayton’s meals are freshly made and then put in a blast freezer which quickly chills the food and locks in the nutrients.

The same process is employed at award-winning family butchers H Dayus, in St John’s, where there are 35 traditional meals on the menu with single portions available for well under a fiver.

Tristan Meier, shop manager, said: “We’ve been doing it for about three years and started just with cottage pies and lasagne and it’s gone from there.”

He said the menu list now included mouth-watering dishes such as beef casserole and herb dumplings, pork in orange sauce and Herefordshire steak.

Mr Meier said many of his customers also cared about supporting local growers with all the butcher’s products were sourced from within a 15-mile radius of the Worcestershire border.

So while what Mr Clayton has coined the ‘English takeaway’ certainly won’t sound the death knell of the Friday night take-out, it does offer a fresh option for people looking for a convenient meal with that home cooked taste.