Weekend food

Back to school is a busy and expensive time for so many families around the country and now there’s the challenge of school lunches. This week I’ll concentrate on packed lunches and in future columns I’ll have suggestions for college students.

Meanwhile, invest in a copy book or folder and gradually compile a collection of your kids’ favourite comforting recipes so they can leave home armed with a useful survival kit. But back to school lunches, the bane of so many parents’ lives, yet phenomenally important not only to nourish our kids physically but to feed their brains and to help with concentration.

Most school lunches seem to be bread based so if we agree with the fundamental fact that our food should be our medicine rather than doing us damage we need to ditch the squishy sliced pan from our shopping basket.