Jottage from Lancaster - Chicken, Cheese and Ham

Buying ready meals has changed for me from becoming the norm to something I have done maybe only once or twice since that day in Axminster when we had our encounter with Hugh. It was something that had been on my mind - saving the money that most of us are keen to do at the moment - so it struck at exactly the right time. When we were going down to Deborah's for a few days (Deborah being my other daughter, Heather's sister), I stopped off at Waitrose and bought a packet of chicken breasts with cheese and ham which I thought might be palatable and easy to cook (and ease and speed was what I was after as with 2 rambunctious grandchildren to look after for the day I didn't want to come back and start to prepare food). 

Amelia and Ethan - Tristan's cousins

It was nice to be able to throw the packets into the oven with minimum of fuss. I had even bought a packet of mashed potato to cook up with it and ready-cut veggies. And it was nice - really nice. When you're hungry and have little time, it works really well. But as my mother used to say (or at least I think she might have done at some time) - everything is just time or money - and in this case it was quite a lot of money, but only a little time. I'm not going to tot up what it actually cost, but if the hens had been hand reared on dew-picked corn, the cheese from cow grazed on the finest Alpine grasses then tenderly brought down to the valleys and lightly slaughtered - well, you get my meaning. If it had been the highest quality food then it may well have been worth the cost. As it is, the manufacturers knew I would pay up for the ease of throwing a meal on to the table in super-quick time and charged me accordingly - not for the quality of ingredients used.


I think I have talked about this before here - but I do enjoy buying really nice ingredients and making up a meal which even so is still lots cheaper than buying it. Whereas my shop bought chicken meal was all eaten up, it's nice to have leftovers for the next night when you cook up from scratch. They then become a ready meal of their own - just as easy and convenient - but much, much cheaper and much, much nicer.