Okay, so I know for a fact that many people suffer from this same problem. When you live alone, cooking for one can sometimes be a huge pain in backside. Right? Right. 

It’s not like I don’t enjoy whipping together creative, healthy and delicious dishes, because I do. But there are those nights when you just don’t want to. Fact. And what this inevitably leads to are suppers comprising popcorn, tea and tins of tuna, straight out of the tin (not all together, obviously!). 

I was at work on one of these particularly uninspired days when a box landed on my desk. Beneath the brown cardboard lid lay three brown bags, cuddling a few ice packs. 

After rummaging through every brown bag, past a baby marrow and packet of bangers, I discovered that the contents of the box was actually my meal plan for the week, courtesy of UCook, a Cape Town-based company that delivers the ingredients and recipes for your weekly meals to your doorstep (read more about UCook here).    

On the menu for my week: Sage butter chicken with a butternut, crispy bacon and feta salad; Village beef stroganoff with lemon zucchini; and Pub classic with a twist (pork sausages with beetroot salad). 

I gleefully packed everything away and took it home, stuck the recipe cards on the fridge, and got out my pots and pan for the one that was making my taste buds tingle: sage butter chicken! 

The recipe was easy, but what really made it even easier than throwing a ready-made meal into the microwave, was that the ingredients were portioned out already. So there’s no waste, no measuring, just a little chopping and frying and seasoning… What a pleasure!

I spent the rest of the week working my way through the meals, following the recipes to letter and experiencing lovely new flavours – the creme fraiche, capers, honey and mustard dressing that went with the beetroot in the Pub Classic was particularly spectacular! 

My tuna and popcorn dinners seem so lazy now, especially when there are so many new start-ups in the SA making home-cooking easy for the busy person. Read more about them here… And get cooking!