Mulholland - The Batch Lady: Shop Once. Cook Once. Eat Well All Week.

TO PETER, JAKE & ZARA
THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING.

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Text Copyright Suzanne Mulholland 2020

Suzanne Mulholland asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978-0-00-837322-1

eBook ISBN: 978-0-00-837323-8

Photography: Danielle Woods

Food styling: Rosie Ramsden

Prop styling: Linda Berlin and Wei Tang

Design & Art Direction: Georgina Hewitt

Editorial Director: Kate Fox

Project Editor: Daniel Hurst

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The Batch Lady

Suzanne Mulholland

CONTENTS

My name is Suzanne Mulholland but you might know me as The Batch Lady.

Can I tell you a secret? Im not a cook far from it in fact. My transformation into The Batch Lady was not something I planned, but something that happened out of necessity.

As a busy wife and mother with a large extended family on my doorstep, I often felt like I was stuck in a kind of Groundhog Day a slave to the kitchen who was forever trying to churn out tasty and nutritious meals night after night when, in truth, I would much rather be spending time with my kids or reading a good book. Add to this the fact that I live on a remote farm in the Scottish Borders with the nearest shop over 30 minutes drive away and youll start to get an idea of what a slog this could be. The worst thing was that I had always enjoyed cooking, but being chained to the kitchen day after day was starting to make me resent it. Something had to change. I had to get organized!

Luckily, organization is something I have been trained for. Literally. I had studied business and time management at university and have always used workarounds to get household chores done in the shortest possible time. With a new determination to apply these skills to mealtimes, I developed a system where I made batch-cooked meals in advance and stored them in the freezer. Soon, I was only cooking one day a week.

As time went on, I streamlined my system even further by pairing meals that had similar core ingredients together. This meant that I could, with careful planning and shopping, make multiple meals for the freezer at the same time. In no time at all, I found that I was able to reclaim time to spend doing the things I loved, with the added bonuses that we were also eating better, saving money and had very little food waste.

Liberated from the kitchen, friends soon began to notice how carefree and organized I was at mealtimes, so I started sharing some of my hacks with them. In no time at all, word had got out and people were asking for more tips and tricks, curious to see if they could use the same techniques in their own homes. I invited twenty curious friends around to my house and gave them a live demonstration of how to cook 10 meals in 1 hour. My guests were blown away by the demo and encouraged me to share a video of the event on YouTube and Facebook. The Batch Lady was born!

Looking back, its ironic that something that I started to save myself time has now become my full-time job! Standing in front of that group of friends in my kitchen I would never have believed that my message would resonate with so many people but, just two years later, I have been lucky enough to share my message with thousands of people through my website and social media channels, and now this book!

As our lives get ever busier, it can be harder and harder to find time for the things that really count. I hope that the tips, tricks and recipes in these pages can help you reclaim your time, alleviate your stress and fill the tables and bellies of you and your loved ones with tasty, home-cooked food.

Believe in the batch!

To a lot of people, batching meals can seem complicated at first, but it is actually a far simpler way of cooking. With a little bit of planning, you can save yourself time and money every week, allowing you to spend more of your time on the things you enjoy. Heres how

BRINGING TIME MANAGEMENT HOME

On the surface, the phrase time management sounds very impersonal and businesslike, and not at all like something that you want to worry about in your lovely, cozy home. In fact, the whole point of introducing this technique at home is to make more time for the fun stuff. Freeing you up to spend more time playing with the kids, more time snuggling up with a glass of wine and a good book, more time spent with friends and family. Its about giving yourself time to exhale and process, and in todays relentlessly busy world, that can only be a good thing. In practice, time management is simply looking at the many tasks that take up your time and working out how they can be streamlined to free you up for other stuff. The stuff that matters.

This method can be applied to everything from the way you get dressed in the morning, how you organize your laundry or do the housework to what you are making for dinner in the evening. Streamlining my life like this has saved my sanity and allowed me time to feel like me again rather than some kind of cooking and cleaning automaton!

I apply this approach to every aspect of my life but the thing that has made the biggest difference, by far, is time managing the food that I cook for my family on a daily basis. Something that used to dominate every evening can now be accomplished in just an hour a week. Cooking in this way has allowed me to reclaim my evenings and my enjoyment of cooking and it can do the same for you!

HEADSPACE NOT PERFECTIONISM

Batching is not about perfectionism. Its about headspace.

I get asked by people all the time if Im a perfectionist, to which I usually respond with a burst of laughter, because I am far from this. Being organized and managing my time is not about everything being perfect, its about giving myself a break from constantly thinking about those chores that have to be done day after day. Instead, my week is planned and I feel freer to enjoy the fun things, like spending time with my family and friends.