Food writer baffles This Morning viewers with tips for cheap lunches

Release time：2024-05-21 07:22:34 Source：International Insights news portal

A mother has been slammed by viewers on This Morning for her tips and tricks on how to meal prep school lunches. 

Food writer Suzanne Mulholland, known as 'The Batch Lady', from the Scottish Borders, went onto the television show today to discuss how parents can save cash by batch-cooking their children's packed lunch. 

The former time management consultant told Dermot and Alison about the cheapest foods to include in the lunches, advising parents to make pasta ahead of time, freeze hummus and yoghurts and send their children to school with crumpets. 

Suzanne is a fan of freezing various foods and defrosting them as and when needed, and told parents to clear a drawer out to dedicate to school lunches - admitting that she had a large freezer to store all her items in. 

However, her tips didn't go down well with viewers who said they wouldn't give their children three day old pasta and questioned how they were supposed to toast crumpets at school.  

'The Batch Lady' Suzanne Mulholland, from the Scottish Borders, went onto the television show today to discuss how parents can save cash by batch-cooking their children's packed lunch

She told Dermot and Alison about the cheapest foods to include in the lunches, including pasta, hummus and crumpets

Suzanne Mulholland's top tips for saving cash when packing your child's packed lunch box 

'The Batch Lady' went on This Morning today and spoke about her tips and tricks on how to save your pennies by meal-prepping lunch.

Bake your own cakes

Instead of buying processed cakes to put in lunchboxes, bake your own when you're making other elements of the packed lunch. 

She said sweet treats are cheaper this way and you are not feeding your kids highly-processed food out of a packet. 

 Make hummus from scratch  

The chickpea-based dip is cost-effective and can last days in the fridge, making it perfect for packed-lunch boxes.

Suzanne recommended to bake cakes fresh and freeze them because it works out cheaper 

But Suzanne says to make it yourself rather than using store-bought hummus, as it only contains a couple of ingredients and is therefore cheaper.

Hummus can be used with vegetables such as carrot, celery or cucumber sticks, making it an easy way to incorporate vegetables into packed lunch boxes, she said.

She said you can also freeze hummus and yogurt to consume at a later date.  

Buy your breads in advance

Suzanne said if you want to switch up the type of bread you use in your sandwiches, buying the packets at the start of the month and storing them in the freezer means you can defrost and mix and match easily. 

Dedicate a freezer drawer to packed lunches

Because Suzanne's tips contain a lot of freezing of foods, she says dedicating freezer drawers to school packed lunches allows you to have the space to plan. 

Buy in bulk

The Batch Lady said to avoid buying things advertised as lunch or bite-sized and instead buy things in bulk.

That way you can portion out what you need and it works out cheaper than buying convince items. 

Avoid juice boxes 

Suzanne advised parents to avoid juice boxes because they can be quite costly and instead use squash, which gives the same effective of fruity flavour but it is cheaper. 

The Batch Lady said: 'If you're not using your freezer right now, clear it out and have one drawer just for school lunches.'

She added later on in the show: 'If you've got a few things you've pulled out the freezer you can put them in still cold and then it's going to keep it cold going forward in the summer.' 

But one user wrote: 'You can't just have one freezer drawer full of kid's lunches, what's she on?'

She then moved on to say that you can easily freeze hummus and yogurt, much to Dermot and Alison's surprise. 

But others questioned how true this was, with one user claiming that the dishes would come out watery if frozen and then defrosted. 

Suzanne's segment didn't go down well with fans of the show who hit out at her freezing methods 

'Who freezes hummus???? Who??? Ridiculous item. Yogurt comes out watery if you freeze it,' they said.

Suzanne also suggested parents bake cakes while batch-cooking the lunches to use time more effectively, adding that the sweet treats could be stored in the freezer and taken out at a later date, ensuring that no food goes to waste.

The mother said that cooking tons of pasta allows parents to portion it out throughout the week and she estimated that servings can cost as little as 7p.

She said: 'Things like pasta are really good to do. You can do it at the start of the week, it lasts a couple of days in the fridge, about three days. If you're on a budget pasta is a great way to do [lunches].'

But one viewer took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to say that they wouldn't eat three-day-old pasta. 

Another person wrote: 'Who puts buns in the freezer? Just eat them.'

Suzanne also told parents to buy crumpets for school-packed lunches if they are on a strict budget as they are only '20p per portion and are really filling and nice'

One user said they wouldn't eat three-day-old pasta, as the Batch Lady recommends 

She then told parents to go for non-nut pesto and chocolate spread, in case there are children with allergies nearby, which angered some viewers and left them questioning how they coped in their school days.

'Why should you go for non-nuts? Ffs, how did we survive childhood before all this b*****ks,' one commented.

Suzanne also told parents to buy crumpets for school-packed lunches if they are on a strict budget as they are only '20p per portion and are really filling and nice'.

But watchers of the show questioned how their child would be able to eat a crumpet when it has to be warmed up. 

They wrote: 'Right a crumpet needs to be heated or toasted. What f

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