What would you do with the free time if you didn't have to be a taxi to your kids? Tell me and you could win a £25 Sainsbury's voucher

Photo credit - DJ_maxim

This competition was created by Sainsbury’s Bank Car Insurance and I'm taking part as a member of the
Sainsbury's Bank Parent Blogger Network.

Sainsbury's recently introduced the ‘Taxi of Mum and Dad Calculator’ — a fun way to see how much you could earn in taxi fares, if your children were ‘on the clock.’

It’s not all about money, your time is also precious. How would you spend the hours if you weren't playing taxi? Finish a good book, getting outdoors or just doing nothing, are some of the little luxuries the Money Matters team would enjoy.

To find out how parents would rather spend their time, I'm offering a £25 Sainsbury’s Voucher as a prize. All I need to know is 'What would you do with your time saved?'

To enter and win the prize of a £25 Sainsbury's voucher, you simply have to leave a comment below telling me what you would do with the time saved not being the Taxi of Mum and Dad.You can increase your chances of winning by tweeting about the giveaway and referring a friend to enter.The more times you enter, the better your chance of winning the £25 Sainsbury's voucher.

Whether or not you’re our prize winner, your affordable family activity ideas could also potentially appear in a future Money Matters Blog post. The winners will be chosen via Rafflecopter (which uses random.org) and announced on this page. The deadline for entering the giveaway is Wednesday 1st May.

Terms & Conditions

This giveaway is open to all readers in the UK.
Rafflecopter will accept entries for this giveaway at 12am on Wednesday 24th April.
Rafflecopter will close the competition at 12am on Wednesday 1st May
Sainsbury's Bank will run this competition via Rafflecopter.
The winner will be chosen by Sainsbury's Bank via Rafflecopter (which uses random.org) and announced on this page.
Entrants must have a UK address to enter. No bulk or third party entrants.
The prize is non-transferable, and will be sent out from Sainsbury’s Bank.
The giveaway winner will be contacted by the blog host to retrieve name and address.
The name and address of the winner will not be used for marketing purposes by Sainsbury’s Bank.
All entries may be featured on the Sainsbury’s Bank Money Matters blog post without further payment.
The winner will be contacted by e-mail, if they do not respond within seven days another winner may be chosen.
Entries using any software or automated process to make bulk entries will be disqualified.

(Disclosure - I have received a Sainsbury's voucher for hosting this giveaway)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Getting through family car journeys

Today's post is a guest post by the Sainsbury's Finance Blog team. They have recently invited me to join the Sainsbury’s Bank Family Blogger Network and have offered me this post. Please see the disclosure at the end of this post for further information.

There’s nothing quite like the excitement of going on holiday. Maybe you’ll soon be camping in France with your family ... but first you have to get through an eight hour road trip in a confined space, without World War Three breaking out!

With that in mind, here are our tips for staying sane on car journeys with your loved ones.

Can ready meals be healthy, and tasty?

Stock photo supplied by Sainsbury's

I will admit, I don't do ready meals. It's an expensive way of eating for families when you are on a budget too, especially when you have a child that eats like a horse and always wants more. (Step forward, Monkey.) And you know me, I enjoy cooking things now. Yes, I used to eat them when I lived alone - I know well the feeling that cooking for one doesn't seem worth it.

Of course, the time that ready meals can come into their own is when you're on a diet because they are a standard unit and you know how many calories are in that little tray. Healthy ready meals have got better over the years - I swear the first ones were scientifically designed to remove the flavour along with the fat, sugar and salt.

Sainsbury's contacted me and asked me if I'd like to try some of their Be Good To Yourself ready meals. They have put a lot of winter dishes into the range that they discovered people turn to in the winter months for comfort food, like shepherd's pie (preferred by older people), lasagne (top choice for 18-35 year olds) and curry, that are often perceived to be calorific.

I say "we" but this task was delegated to my husband. He volunteered to try them out as they were convenient for him to take to work and have for his lunch, now that he is working days and is subsequently always out at lunchtimes. We bought two of the larger dishes which cost £3 or are 2 for £5 and 3 of the smaller dishes, which cost £2 and are currently 3 for £5. All have a calorie count of between 300 and 400 calories.

The dishes we tried were:

- Chicken Jambalaya
- Chicken Chow Mein (these were the larger dishes )
- Shepherds Pie
- Beef Lasagne
- Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Of the dishes, the chow mein was his favourite. The bigger dishes were a hit anyway, and they were more filling for him. The jambalaya was just on the right side of being too spicy, which I suspect means I would have enjoyed as I can take more heat than him, but was

He was a little more disappointed in the smaller dishes. What he didn't tell me was that he is not really a huge fan of ready made shepherd's pie and although he thought it was a perfectly fine example, he didn't really like it and found it "processed". The chicken and mushroom pie threw him slightly as he didn't realise that the pie didn't have pastry (it's potato topped, much like a shepherd's pie) but all the same, he preferred it. And the lasagne? That was deemed "OK"; tasted nice but a bit watery, although he microwaved and felt it might be less watery if he had cooked it in an oven.

Our overall verdict, then, were that they were a mixed bag but that the bigger dish ones were better to eat. The cost of those when bought as a multibuy means that one ready meal would cost £2.50 which is comparable to buying sandwiches and so forth. This makes them a viable person for an office worker who have access to a microwave oven and is trying to watch their weight. The range is substantially wider than I have mentioned - you can see all the dishes here. There are several veggie options there, in case you're wondering. Something for everyone in other words, although we have not tried the other meals.

Back to the question in the title of this post- can ready meals be healthy and tasty? My answer is a qualified yes. There are some nice ones, but there will possibly always be some dishes that will always be nicer made from scratch.

(Sainsbury's kindly supplied gift cards to allow me to buy the dishes named above to try and review them. I have not received any other compensation, I have not been told what to write and all opinions are words are mine - or my husband's!)

Meal Planning Monday - the uber organised (and 5 for £20 review) edition

So last week, we were trying out the latest Sainsbury's evening meal plan which provides a whole working week's worth of meals for £20. Here's how we got on.

First, I went shopping. (I know, amazing, huh?!) I left off some of the things on the shopping list that I already had in but I did substitute along the way too and the bill for those items was around £17. With usual things I buy (like milk etc) my week's bill came to £32 and I only went back once for some more mushrooms as I didn't have as much in as I thought. Still, pretty amazing, although it was possibly helped by the meat being on special offer -  the meat took up half of the budget!

Meal Planning Monday - another 5 for £20 edition!

You may remember that I have in the past reviewed the Sainsbury's meal plans. Last May, we tried the £50 weekly one and then in October, we tried out one of their evening meal plans, which offer 5 evening meals for a family of 4 for £20. Sainsbury's have just launched a new meal plan so have given me the chance to try  the latest one. The meals have generally been brilliant, although I do find some of them rather carb heavy so I tend to cut back on quantities now if it's a pasta or rice dish in particular. And they add mozzarella to risottos - what is THAT all about?

The meal plans are great if you don't have time to meal plan and they often suggest veggie options. You can print a shopping list for you and transfer most of the ingredients into their internet shopping site - you have to add some of the items for reasons I will never understand.

So here is what we're having this week, courtesy of Sainsbury's.

Monday - Tomato and broccoli risotto
Tuesday - Simple sausage supper
Wednesday - Creamy pork and mash
Thursday - Sandwiches or soup and sandwiches
Friday - Turkey chilli with rice
Saturday - left free for family party
Sunday - Cheesy jacket potato with bacon and pepper ratatouille

Come back next week and I'll tell you how we did. Don't forget to visit Mrs M's blog to check out the other entries in this week's Meal Planning Monday and feel free to check out Sainsbury's Live Well for Less site and all their meal plans.

What's on your menu this week?

Meal Planning Monday

Well, as you know, last week I tried out one of the 5 for £20 evening meal plans that Sainsbury's have been promoting. I thought, before I went on to what we're eating this week, that I'd talk about how it went.

Meal Planning Monday - the 5 for £20 edition!

Time for a different style of post this week again. I'm testing out one of Sainsbury's 5 for £20 meal plans this week. The idea is that the meal plans will provide 5 family meals (for 4) for just £20. Seems amazing in the times we're living in, doesn't it In order to prove it, Sainsbury's have sent me a £20 gift card to give it a go and see how I get on.

In case you haven't seen it, here it is...

My children's starring role in the Sainsbury's ad that was on ITV last week.



They are the two children sat at the table near the end, sitting down to eat. Earlier in the ad, you can see my hands (and the children's!) rolling sausages into meatballs and you can clearly hear Missy Woo say "It's a bit gooey".

Bless.

Meal Planning Monday - a week of My Daddy Cooks meals!

If you read this feature weekly, you'll know that last week, I used the Sainsbury's Feed your Family for £50 meal plan after they kindly sent me a week's shopping to test out the meal plan. It went pretty well, although we didn't use all the lunch stuff, partly due to the others going camping. The meals were pretty good on the whole - some could have done with a little more flavour, but the frittata and "carbonara" were gorgeous. The sweet and sour was the only dish that was not nice at all - but it used a jar of cooking sauce and I'm never a big fan of those. The breakfasts were a bit basic in the week, but I found that using yogurt with the muesli, for example, made it more palatable. Some of the portion sizes were HUGE - the tuna pasta bake, for example, was enough for 8 meals, not 4!

We did film ourselves cooking and the children appeared in an advert! It was on Wednesday night during Britain's Got Talent. I would have missed it were it not for Twitter as I got a few "was that your children?" tweets. Thanks to ITV+1 and Sky+, I managed to record it for the children, who were, of course, away camping at the time. You could also see my hands and hear Missy Woo saying "It's a bit gooey" as we rolled sausages into meatballs. So thanks very much to Sainsbury's for giving us the opportunity to try out the meal plan - and for turning my children into stars for 5 seconds.

So, onto this week and again, I'm doing something different. You see, I've been inspired. The other day, I received a copy of My Daddy Cooks by Nick Coffer. Nick is a Twitter friend whose blog - also called My Daddy Cooks - became a runaway success when he started it in late 2009. Nick films his son Archie and himself cooking in their kitchen. Nick's recipes are always easy to follow, great family food and accessible to cook with children around - exactly what I like. And now he's written a book containing 100 recipes.

Photo - Veronique Leplat

When the book arrived, I had a quick flick through and I loved the layout and style of the book - easy to read and follow, with some nice pictures, both of the dishes and of Nick and Archie going. Then I sat down and read through the book - and I read and read and kept reading! I started to make a list of all the recipes that I must cook as soon as possible - and the list ran over two pages. So then, I had an idea to plan my week's meals around recipes from the book. To be honest, I could be planning meals from the book for weeks given the length of the list - this doesn't even scratch the surface of it. Needless to say, I loved the book - it's full of great family recipes that you'll enjoy cooking, with children or without. I cannot wait to try this week's recipes.

So, here we go. This week's meals are going to be:

Monday - Minty lamb and butternut squash tagine
Tuesday - No fry Singapore noodles
Wednesday - Turkey and cranberry meatloaf
Thursday - Chickpea and chorizo soup
Friday -  Burgers and chips
Saturday - Lentil curry with cauliflower
Sunday - Family party so no cooking for me!

And I shall report back next week on how it all went.

Why not pop over to Mrs M's blog for more meal planning entries?

( Sainsbury's sent me a week's shopping so I could try out their £50 weekly meal plan and a camera so I could film making one of the meals. I was also sent, separately, a copy of My Daddy Cooks to review and keep. I have not received any other compensation in either case; I have not been told what to write and all opinions are my own.)

Meal Planning Monday - with a difference!

This week, my meal plans are a bit different. This is because this week, my meal planning and shopping have been done for me! I'm taking part in the Sainsbury's Feed your family for £50 campaign which includes a week's meal plan to feed four people three meals a day for £50. On Friday, absolutely piles of food turned up  and I can verify that they indeed cost around £50. The total cost was actually around £57 but deduct the £5.50 delivery charge and the £2 odd extra cost for some substitutions, the cost was £50.55. My fridge is now packed to the rafters!

Another reason I've been sent the food is so we can film ourselves making one of the meals, and the footage might get used in their ads that are running during Britain's Got Talent. However, in order to meet the deadline, we've already done that on Sunday. I'm not going to stick to the meal plan religiously so that it works for us and our lifestyle. In addition, the rest of the family might be going camping for a couple of days so I might be making some of the dishes for me or postponing them for a day. So, here, based on Sainsbury's meal plan is my plan for this week:

Monday - Tuna, mushroom and mozzarella pasta bake
Tuesday - Roasted vegetables with chicken and rice
Wednesday - Tomato, spinach and red onion frittata
Thursday - Sweet and sour chicken
Friday - Spaghetti carbonara

Saturday - left free

Sunday - Roast pork, roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli

(If you haven't already guessed, we filmed ourselves making sausage, tomato and cannellini pot with mash)

I think that's not a bad mix. They have included enough to make a cooked breakfast at weekends, and sandwiches or pittas for lunch mostly. The £50 is a lot of food, mostly from their basics range but it's all good fresh and healthy food. Possibly a little too healthy - as there are no treats included, not even small ones. Also, it includes no drinks at all, nor any cleaning products or toiletries. As my approximately £50 weekly food bill  includes these things, I don't think I am doing bad at all! The site includes tips for small variations or for making some of the dishes veggie so it's worth a look, even if it's just to get some ideas.

Come back next week to see how we got on with it!

Why not pop over to Mrs M's blog for more meal planning entries?