Do you do much food preparation or are you Mr convenience?

I was on the ready meals for a while after moving in to my student house, but after a while I realised it was too expensive, the meals weren't big enough and after a while I got completely fed up of them.

Since then I've been cooking properly and noticed a huge improvement. Sure, it takes a bit of time, but it's worth it to eat a decent sized meal that actually tastes like food. I grew up always eating cooked meals too, my mum often puts hours into her cooking, and the results have always been delicious.

People should find the time to cook themselves proper meals once in a while, or make the time if they do have hectic schedules; even get others to cook for them. It's not hard to cook basic meals, and plenty of recipe books and websites exist if you want to do something a bit special, and the results are much better than saving a few minutes.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Don't you find it cheaper to cook your own meals than to buy the ready meals? I noticed microwave meals in particular are more expensive than other things you can buy such as fish (which doesn't take long to cook and you can't really go wrong with), and you can eat this with say potatoes and some veg, which are likely to last a few days.

Or are ready meals considerably cheaper over there? I guess on a meal-to-meal basis they might work out slightly cheaper, but overall you should be able to make things more cheaply yourself. I tend to go for the cheapest option in the supermarkets without really noticing a real decline in the standard of the food.

There's nowhere I can't reach.