• Learn basic cooking skills
• If busy, try a crock-pot or prepare lots of food at the weekend and freeze
• Use recipes you are very familiar with for entertaining

Cooking may not have been a skill you learned growing up but it can be healthy, low cost and even enjoyable activity.

Basic cooking

Basic cooking is simple to do and worth learning.

• Teach yourself from a basic cookbook

• Take a cooking class

• Have a friend or relative teach you

Cooking Tips for Busy People

• Get an electric crock-pot. You can set these up in the morning and your dinner will be ready when you walk in the door in the evening

• Cook large amounts on the weekend when you have time and freeze the food in serving sizes.  These can then be defrosted and heated for dinner during the week

• Use salads, fruit and other quick meal ideas

Entertaining

• Prepare food using a recipe you have used many times

• This is not the time to try that new recipe for the first time

• Know the cooking time for each piece of the meal so that it will all be fresh and warm

• Plan on defrosting time if using frozen ingredients

• Pay attention to food presentation

• Professional chefs do and it only takes a moment

• Prepare snack food or appetizers

• These can carry the guests over especially if you are finding the food taking longer than you thought

• Make sure you have the right size pots and pans and the right size oven to cook large ingredients

• Its not uncommon for people to scale up ingredients e.g. large turkey only to find they do not have a pan to fit it or it will not fit in their oven

• Remember larger amounts of food take longer to cook

• Have a color theme to the food, plates and decorations to create a professional looking presentation