Mum’s recipe for health at 60p a plate
Rising costs push caterers to brink
FRUGAL Chorizo omelette A MUM-of-one has shown you can make delicious meals for two costing as little as 60p per plate.
Jane Ashley, 50, still uses quality ingredients such as free-range chicken and freerange eggs in the cookbook she wrote after her daughter left for university.
Her roast butternut squash risotto is 60p per serving, chorizo omelette with potato wedges and coleslaw is £1 a portion and slow-cooked beef and ale pie costs less than £2 a head.
Jane, of London, said of Home Economics 2.0 Cooking for two on a budget: “I wanted to show you don’t need to spend a fortune to make healthy, delicious food for two.”
BOOK COOK Jane Ashley Hot meals may go to cut costs
RISING food prices are putting free healthy school dinners under threat.
A report has found a million kids from low-income families who get the dinners risk losing their only hot meal of the day.
The Soil Association warns a Amount allocated for each free meal given to primary school pupils 20% rise in fruit and veg prices is forcing caterers to use lower quality produce or replace hot meals with cold food.
Its report says: “We now face a return to the dark days of the turkey twizzler.”
Jamie Oliver campaigned to get turkey twizzlers off school menus 13 years ago and the Soil Association fears strides since then to provide “healthy and nutritious” meals could be reversed without Government action. It wants the £2.30 per pupil allotted to give free meals to all reception, year one and two pupils to be ring-fenced. Rob Percival, of the Soil Association, said: “We are at a tipping point. Providers of school meals are facing a cocktail of pressures.”
The report adds: “Children spend 190 days a year in school. For many a hot school lunch is their only hot meal of the day.
“The Government must now take steps to safeguard the quality of school meals.” It also calls on the Government to “buy British” for its £40million free School Fruit and Veg Scheme in England.
Just 13% of apples and 5% of pears are from the UK and teachers in a recent survey said the produce used currently was often “only fit for the bin”.