Claire Thomson: My essential recipes to leave home with

Food writer and chef Claire Thomson has written ‘Dear Grace: Recipes From Your Mother for the Next Chapter in Life’, a cookbook that grew out of exchanges with her college-going daughter

Claire Thomson 

It's coming to the end of the last summer at home for many teenagers. With the first CAO offers on the table, they - and their parents - are discovering what’s going to be happening for the next few years as they go on to take their places in the world. For many, this involves leaving home to study, something that can give parents the real heebie jeebies. How can a child who currently seems incapable of getting up in the morning without being rousted take care of themselves? Can they figure out how to wash their own clothes? (Or will they be back at weekends with a packed rucksack for your washing machine?) How will they manage to do their own shopping? To budget? And what on earth are they going to eat?

After spending the last 17-18 years cooking and baking and trying to include a variety of vegetables in their diets, this is it: they’re off, stabilisers ditched, free wheeling themselves into their own shared kitchens and trying to feed themselves without any backup.