Speedy supper

This evening I got home from work 20 minutes before dinner needed to be on the table. A little bit of pre-planning meant that my family had this (see image) for dinner. It's a simple meal, jacket potatoes, but with a few simple extras that make this meal highly nutritious.

So obviously the bit that had to be thought out in advance was baking the potatoes. I prepared the potatoes before leaving the house, placed them in the oven and set the oven to come on 2 hours before dinner.

The other foods that were served with the dinner were very simple and came together easily, but you can see that this is a very balanced meal containing protein (tuna, chickpeas and tofu), complex carbohydrates (potato, chickpeas and corn) and plenty of different coloured vegetables (mushrooms, broccoli, salad leaves and tomatoes), providing a wide variety of nutrients.

This meal used up a lot of store cupboard ingredients. The chickpea stew was made by mixing a tin of chickpeas, half a tin of corn, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a dash of dried herbs, and warming the mixture in a pan for 15 minutes. Definitely not gourmet, but filling and warming.

I mixed some tinned tuna with the rest of the corn and a little mayonnaise. I stir-fried a pack of tofu with some mushrooms, and then made a quick salad of mixed leaves, baby tomatoes and a little feta cheese. Oh, and not forgetting the steamed broccoli.

I wouldn't serve this meal at a dinner party but it filled up the tummies of my busy family, took just a quarter of an hour to pull together, and I satisifed myself that I had given my family a filling nutriiotus meal. What more could I want?