Bag My Food - Easy Weeknight Meals

Dedicated to all of the food producers: the farmers, growers, fishermen, bakers and artisan producers who provide all the delicious ingredients that make cooking such a joy. WHATS FOR DINNER TONIGHT? THIS ALL TOO FAMILIAR QUESTION HAS BEEN PLAYING ON THE MINDS OF HUNGRY FOLK FOR LONGER THAN WE CARE TO REMEMBER. Dinner has to be fast, easy and tasty to keep the entire family happy, so to keep things simple most of us resort to cooking the same few recipes on repeat. This wasnt good enough for us, so our team of talented test chefs have made it their mission to constantly develop healthy, delicious and creative dishes to feed hungry tummies at the end of a long day.

Our wonderful My Food Bag customers, ranging from the youngest food critics to world-renowned chefs, have been cooking, testing, eating, rating and commenting on our recipes. We love all the fantastic feedback from our customers, but what we hear most often is that they love coming home to a dinner that they know is tasty, healthy and inspiring. Our customers rate each recipe out of five and provide detailed comments about all aspects of the meal including: how easy it was to make, how tasty and whether it worked for the folk they were cooking for. So we decided to narrow down those favourites and compile them all here. Were thrilled to present our top-rated, most fabulous dishes in our first cookbook. Our recipes are organised seasonally to help you decide what to cook, whether its a cold winter evening, a balmy summer night or anything in between.

With each new season we have an abundance of choice when it comes to fresh produce and we design our recipes to make the most of each turn in the weather we get excited about using crunchy green asparagus in spring, sweet juicy tomatoes in summer, succulent pears in autumn and creamy butternut in winter. In fact, the seasons provide our inspiration and ensure that you can make the most of the freshest, and locally grown, produce at any time of year! All of our recipes have nutritional analyses attached to them, so you can see exactly whats in them. Each recipes nutritional analysis refers to one serve. There is nothing we love more than hearing our customers success stories especially when they never knew they could cook duck, thought quinoa was a type of wood (or didnt know it was pronounced keen-wa) or didnt think they liked coriander. After coming home from work or spending a full day with the kids, its tough trying to feel motivated by whats in your pantry. Fortunately all of these recipes have been tried and tested by home cooks, without fancy appliances or the help of a professional chef.

And we all know theres nothing better than sitting down to a home-cooked meal knowing exactly what has gone into it and exactly how good it is for you. Many of our home cooks have written glowing reviews of the meals you will see them attached to the recipes. Our easy-to-follow recipes encourage everyone to help out in the kitchen (clean-up included!) and pass on some invaluable skills to the younger ones in the family. Simple jobs like rolling meatballs or stuffing wraps get the kids involved in the process of cooking, and may make a master chef out of them yet! INTRODUCTION ABOUT MY FOOD BAG WE ARE FIRM BELIEVERS IN THE REAL FOOD PHILOSOPHY: EATING FOOD FROM THE GROUND, SEA OR SKY NOT FROM FACTORIES My Food Bag has been delivering the answer to the Whats for dinner dilemma, along with all the natural ingredients and delicious recipes to families in New Zealand and Australia since March 2013. Cecilia Robinson, My Food Bags CEO, had the idea to provide simple and healthy recipes, along with all the ingredients to create them, directly to peoples homes late in 2012. Cecilia had her moment of inspiration after the thought of fighting queues at the supermarket became all too much as she entered her eighth month of pregnancy.

She enlisted the help of her husband James, MasterChef New Zealand winner and dietitian Nadia Lim, marketing guru (and Nadias husband) Carlos Bagrie and business leader Theresa Gattung, and My Food Bag (and Cecilia and Jamess son, Tom) was born. Clearly Cecilia wasnt the only one struggling with the whats for dinner dilemma, because My Food Bag took off in New Zealand and soon expanded across the shore to Australia. We are firm believers in the real food philosophy: eating food from the ground, sea or sky not from factories. Its a sure-fire way to enjoy food the way nature intended, with fewer preservatives, less salt and a host of other artificial things. So these recipes, like all our dishes, have natural ingredients as the heroes. Plus, to make healthy eating simple, we have included nutritional information for each recipe this will show you the basics, such as the energy, carbohydrate, protein and saturated fat, in each meal.

We have been a proud supporter of local suppliers since the beginning. We only deal with people who genuinely care about their products and our customers. In each region we deliver to, we buy from local farmers and growers who are known for their high-quality ingredients and wonderful products. Our suppliers stand by their produce (and so do we). We have a free-range, free-farmed or genuinely wild ethos when it comes to our meat and animal products. Ethical reasons aside, we think that this produce tastes better our customers and farming partners have been truly supportive of this thanks guys!

Our farm-gate to plate philosophy means our foods are never tampered with and left exactly as nature intended them.

Our vegetables and fruit are fresh, crisp and vibrant, without artificial additions that interfere with natures perfection. Once the fresh produce has arrived at our distribution centre, we pack it up in our recyclable paper bags, pop in the recipes and deliver it right to your door. No more stressful supermarket visits, no more searching through the pantry for inspiration just the knowledge that the delicious home-cooked meals youre eating every night of the week have been made with love from the ingredients to the finished dish. www.myfoodbag.co.nz
www.myfoodbag.com.au